Tuesday, November 25, 2014

My new book


https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/edward-j-fisher/lands-of-in-ko-8-trilogy-3rd-edition/

KIRKUS REVIEW A sci-fi saga of an alien world, recounting its wars, its near-destruction and its risky restoration. Fans of such whimsical fantasy settings as Piers Anthony’s Xanth or Terry Pratchett’s Discworld may be equally impressed by Fisher’s audacious creation. Inchoate is a planet made of dark matter that occupies a point in space inside the Earth but that’s slightly out of phase in time. As a result, the two independent, evolving environments don’t (normally) interact. Inhabitants of Inchoate are one-sixth the size of Homo sapiens, with a quasi-feudal social structure, advanced technology, and a penchant for befriending talking animals such as jackalopes, rats, dogs and spiders. Successive, advanced alien races have visited Inchoate and used it as a key station in their intergalactic teleportation network. This inspires an act of wartime sabotage that causes Inchoate to be accidentally transmitted several light years away; its people awaken from long-term suspended animation to find themselves in a double-star system in Sirius, where they rebuild over the next thousand years. Fisher further stirs the pot by telling his three-part tale out of chronological order, starting in the middle, proceeding to the prologue and then reaching the finale. The major connecting thread between them is the resourceful troubleshooter Naksarben, aka John Narrowpath, aka Brother Nathan, who weaves his way through palace intrigues and virtuous secret operations against tyrants who rely on religious fundamentalism and militarism to gain power. A final, twist ending about the character’s true origin is a head-scratcher, but by then, readers will have bought into the novel’s blend of quantum mechanics and fairy tale. The author, who also contributes scattered maps, diagrams and illustrations, is a master punster, offering character names such as Hans Pholde, Shellson Carapace, a philosophy professor named Eponymous Muser, a scientist and professor named Prudence DeCysseve, a librarian called Reed Tomes, an order called the Monastery of the Inevitable Whens and a capital city dubbed Distopia. A fetching, seriocomic fantasy of faith, politics, science and death that never succumbs to cuteness.

3rd Edition: November 2014
ISBN: 978-1453519615
Page count: 514pp
Publisher: Xlibris
Program: Kirkus Indie
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31st, 2014