Emissary
by E.B. Brooks
GENRE: Science Fiction
BLURB:
Ewan O’Meara is no stranger to death: in recent months, he’s found his way to limbo at least once per week, much to his parents’ concern. It’s a necessary price for getting experience to become the greatest adventurer his homeland of Veridor has ever known, but the overbearing Veridian Church has him pinned down, soaking him for the penance gold to unlock his stats each time he respawns. And because the Church’s ancient war put an end to both the godlike Gems and the epic quests they once bestowed, Ewan has no better alternative.
That is, until he encounters a young woman fleeing arrest from the Church’s soldiers. At first glance, Treanna Rothchild needs it: she’s clueless about Veridian life. But she has other skills that defy Ewan’s understanding, and she knows things. Unsettling, seditious things the Church wants kept secret at any cost.
And she’s in Veridor to raise an army, to fight an enemy only she can see.
Risking both life and soul, Ewan follows Treanna where no Veridian has ever been and there is no respawning. But for him to have a chance at making a real difference in the strange, harsh world she reveals to him, he must first come to terms with it. Especially as he and Treanna discover how much it has in common with Veridor—and how much they depend on each other to survive.
New-adult science fiction, wrapped in gaming and fantasy around a hopepunk core, Emissary is an immersive, thought-provoking adventure with a little teen romance and a lot of heart.
Purchase Emissary on Amazon
Excerpt:
Tree broke contact, then looked at the others. “I’m taking command. Samuel, move Nathan to cover by the lift. Put his feet up, and keep pressure on that wound. We’ll throw down a kit once we can.”
Sam hesitated but nodded, then knelt to scoop Nathan up.
“Love,” Tree said, locking hard, frightened eyes on Ewan. “You’re with me. Loot the corpses. We’ll disguise ourselves, then retake the camel and retreat.”
“What about Gabe and Vincent?”
“They’ll escape with us, if they’re quick enough.”
Ewan swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”
She darted off to one of the bodies, and he stepped over to the robed figure he’d impaled, thinking a bloody gash in his outfit might be less of a giveaway than a giant frapping hole. But when he pulled the robes free, he knew with a sickened jolt that blood was the least of the differences in appearance.
The man’s copper-skinned face was scarred all over in what was obviously a deliberate, artistic pattern, as though he’d mistaken a knife for a pen. His nose and ears were pierced through with bits of metal, with hair and beard braided and bound in wire that could have come from the ruin’s walls. His muscles were lean and hard, far better fed than should have been possible for someone from the Wastes. Even in death he had a feral air about him, a lingering lethal intent that had Ewan half expecting him to leap out of the sands again.
His hand still clutched a gun, hardly bigger than a tablet. Ewan reached for it, hesitated, and left it to retrieve his thrown sword.
Interview with E.B. Brooks
Any weird things you do when you’re alone?
Don’t we all? Without scaring or scarring anyone, I’ll just say I enjoy exploring the many-layered universe with my active imagination. Life is a game to be experienced, and our minds are the interface. My personal favorite activity is roaming the galaxy and picturing whether and how other worlds and star systems might support life.
What is your favorite quote and why?
I’m a trained statistician: there’s no one answer to these kinds of questions! Instead, I’ll give a spread to offer a sense of the kind of quotes I find compelling. Taken together, they remind me to approach the universe with open eyes and a noble heart.
“Not only is the universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.” –Werner Heisenberg, Across the Frontiers
“If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research.” –Albert Einstein
“I am a child of the green earth, but my race is of the starry skies.” –Paraphrased as a blend of Orphic mysteries and Gnostic texts
“A sword wields no strength unless the hand that holds it has courage.” – Hero's Shade, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” –Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring
Who is your favorite author and why?
That’s a hard one, since so many authors were formative to me. Madeline L’Engle had a massive impact on me as a young child of six, with her mind-stretching physics and portrayal of a harmonious universe. A Swiftly Tilting Planet is still one of my all-time favorites. J.R.R. Tolkien’s world still calls me (my middle name is Beren) from the first time I read those at eight, and I only appreciate his mature characters more as I age in turn. (Not quite to Aragorn’s age yet, but getting there.) I’m reading the Silmarillion with my family this month, in fact. Frank Herbert blew my mind as a ten-year old, with the sheer scale of history and politics in his Dune universe; I remember working to train myself as a Mentat and observing minutia like the Bene Gesserit. (I still do.) And George Orwell had a lasting impact on me as well (reading 1984 at the age of eleven will do that), as someone who could extrapolate from the world as it is (or was). My game world of Terranova (teased in Emissary, a main setting in Book 4) has a three-nations structure in honor of his work.
What, in your opinion, are the most important elements of good writing?
All of them, haha. For me, the thing that compels me to dive into a story (equally true for video media) is a sense of depth and connection to the world and its characters. I want characters who I love (or love to hate), and I want their struggles and labors to be guided by their worlds—and have a lasting impact on them, in turn. The more technical elements of that come from strong narrative and worldbuilding (don’t be afraid of slow starts! That’s where the connection happens!), with a dialogue that carries everything forward. The more philosophical and/or bittersweet, the better for me.
Where did you get the idea for this book?
My wife is also an indie author, and her work drafting inspired me to try my hand at it. I’d recently watched Sword Art Online, and I got to wondering what kind of situation would drive people into game worlds for life. Then I thought about what the people left behind would make of the situation, and I had the basic idea for Emissary. Picturing Veridor as a long-running game of Skyrim helped me flesh out the Gems and their history, and the Centre doubtless inherited elements (other than its name) from my recent watching of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
E.B. Brooks lives in the southeastern USA, where he splits his time between writing, research, and homesteading. He enjoys building fictional worlds, real houses, and landscape models, but he’s most at home with his wife and children, and their many, many pets.
Connect with E.B. Brooks
Goodreads ~ The StoryGraph ~ BookBub
6 comments:
Thank you so much for hosting today.
I like the cover art. Looks great. Sounds like a good book.
Thank you for hosting me today! I'm more than happy to follow up on interview questions, or questions about writing and the Emissary Quintet in general.
Sounds like a really good story.
Thank you, Sherry! (I'm having trouble getting my browser to cooperate on direct replies.)
looks like a fun one
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