2018 Dragon Award Finalist for Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel
Human slavers attack. Despite trying to fight back, there is nothing the young Leefe can do to save his family and friends. But he doesn't have to. The Imperial Marines arrive in the nick of time, and they hate slavers. Three tri-years later, when the new emperor issues a proclamation to integrate the imperial military with non-human citizens, Leefe is among the first to volunteer.
Integration to resurrect the empire as a force for good is challenged by centuries of prejudice against the "dung races." Leefe and the other Wyntonans only want to prove their worth and fight for the empire, but their greatest battles are closer to home.
With threats to the empire from both within and without, this grand experiment has the potential to save it . . . or tear it apart.
The book has earned $20,000 in Amazon, reaching #415 overall. It continues to sell well.
It is book 1 of 3 now, and one more planned.
It was a 2018 Dragon Award Finalist for Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel.
Leefe caught his breath, just about ready to ask Granddad Qinnun if he saw that, only just remembering his vow of silence in the nick of time.
“The wasilla is close, and he’s a big one. I can feel it,” Granddad Qinnun said, taking a deep draught of air into his lungs.
Granddad was a traditionalist. Most of the young had taken to calling the wasilla a “lion,” after the Earth animal. There was enough of a similarity between the two animals, if you could ignore the resplendent scales that covered the wasilla’s throat pouch and the mane on the lion. The two were about the same size, and both were apex predators. Leefe knew that Granddad Qinnun hated the term “lion,” considering it one more appropriation of the humans. He felt it was a crime against the ancestors that the People let one tradition fall after another.
During the old man’s lifetime, the People warred against each other, and the rumor among the young was that he’d killed a person for his a’aden. Leefe didn’t know if that was true—but he didn’t know if it was untrue. It gave him the shivers sometimes, though, when he thought of it.
Most of the People, decimated by millenniums of warfare, had given up fighting centuries ago, but everyone knew that out here in the Silver Range, ritualized combat and raiding had been kept alive until the arrival of the humans. Now, while a’aden hunts were still conducted in the nethers, back in the cities, the act of transitioning from ada to aden was based on age alone.
Not with us, Leefe thought proudly. When I’m old enough, I’m going to get a lion, the biggest one out there.
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by Juan C. Tello C.
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