Book series should deliver what the author promises in the first book of such a group. The two trilogies introduced here are already complete, each with three volumes published and available. You can begin the adventure confident that the end of the story is already written, completed and set in print.
Both these trilogies were written before most of the world caught up with many of the initial thoughts that inspired them.
Generation Mars is set on Earth as it rushes toward calamity and on a newly colonised Mars in the relatively near future. We’ve seen pictures sent from the red planet by unmanned spacecraft travelling, exploring, and even lightly mining its surface. We’re familiar with the red dust that light winds on the planet sometimes turn to small storms. That element of the red planet inspired the book’s titles.
Blood Red Dust, book one, introduces the genetically enhanced group of ‘perfect’ human specimens, called the Chosen, sent to colonise and populate the distant world. This first part of the story is presented in the collected words of many commentators, organised as the brainchild of a later university student, to recreate the early history in the form of her doctorate.
War Over Dust, the second volume, is a traditionally told story describing conflicts between the profit-driven commercial mining consortium and the idealistic settlers housed on Mars. Here, industrial greed causes war against the growing group of highly intelligent, non-materialist colonists in a fight for survival.
Return To Dust, the final book, explores the developing conflict between the humans on Mars and the ultra-developed, Artificial Intelligence entity that has kept their home habitable for many years. When that advanced logical force acquires self-awareness, it threatens the entire human community.
A Seared Sky is an epic adult fantasy story told, in 3 volumes, about an imagined world similar to Earth climatically and geologically, but peopled by many diverse groups with conflicting traditions of right and wrong. There’s a small but significant element of ‘magic’ in the form of a restricted but powerful type of telepathy available only to a chosen few.
Joinings, the first book, follows a diverse group who set out on a forced pilgrimage from their small island. They cross wild seas to the mainland their ancestors had to leave centuries before because of religious differences. Others, left behind on that tiny gem surrounded by a vast ocean, must contend with a new, ambitious, overlord consumed more with the love of power than by any concern for justice.
Partings, the second volume, continues to follow the pilgrimage after an unexpected encounter creates a vital partnership between some followers and the powerful leader of a different tradition. Meanwhile, tensions on the island build as rival powers battle to impose their own ideas and rules on a population steeped in an ancient tradition most are unaware is deeply corrupt.
Convergence, book three, sees the whole civilised world under threat from a powerful group determined to subjugate the entire population for personal gain. Only one individual, a young woman forced into the original pilgrimage against her will, has any hope of defeating the greedy, destructive, would-be overlords.
Whatever route you take to the adventure, enjoy the read!
Stuart Aken 