Category: blog tour

A famously disappointing minor royal and the Emperor’s least favorite grandchild, Prince Kiem is summoned before the Emperor and commanded to renew the empire’s bonds with its newest vassal planet. The prince must marry Count Jainan, the recent widower of another royal prince of the empire.
But Jainan suspects his late husband’s death was no accident. And Prince Kiem discovers Jainan is a suspect himself. But broken bonds between the Empire and its vassal planets leaves the entire empire vulnerable, so together they must prove that their union is strong while uncovering a possible conspiracy.
Their successful marriage will align conflicting worlds.
Their failure will be the end of the empire.

My thoughts:

This was so good. I did not know I needed a gay space conspiracy thriller in my life, turns out I did.

The relationship between Kiem and Jainan is lovely to watch blossom as they investigate what really happened when Prince Taam was killed, unravel a plot to destabilise the treaty that keeps the Empire and its vassals from war, get to know each other better and wind up the security service.

Kiem is one of those people who lead a charmed life, people like them, even their worst moments are amusing and humanising. He can be a lot (I have a friend who is exactly the same) but he means well.

Jainan is a lot more reserved, and with reason as his story is revealed, he’s learnt to keep his thoughts to himself and make himself smaller to avoid attracting attention.

I also loved Bel, Kiem’s aide, who does her best to keep him on the straight and narrow, but has secrets of her own and not just about how she’s so organised.

This was a tremendously fun read, with lots of action and a labyrinthine conspiracy that goes all the way to the top, with the risk of serious danger the closer they get to the heart of it.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

As a science journalist, Jade has seen more than her fair share of peculiar oddities—none weirder than her socially inept fellow reporter Antigone. When the test of a teleporter using an electron collider goes awry, the two women find their world changed in subtle ways, with anomalies breaking out in their personal lives. Their increasingly unstable dimension gives Jade the ability to shapeshift while Antigone can see portals into other worlds.

When the test of a teleporter using an electron collider goes awry, the two women find their world changed in subtle ways, with anomalies breaking out in their personal lives. Their increasingly unstable dimension gives Jade the ability to shapeshift while Antigone can see portals into other worlds.

A fellow journalist who attended the experiment is trapped in another dimension and Jade and Antigone hold the key to saving him. Of course, their task is not just a simple rescue mission. Realizing they will continue to drift into increasingly stranger worlds until they straighten out the paradox, the women reluctantly agree to travel through the multiverse in search of a solution.

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Chapter 2: “Bluebird”

When Jade peered into the mirror, she saw her sister’s face reflected in place of her own. Jade reached toward her sister’s face and watched as her sister’s hand reached forward, all framed by the mirror’s fading, pink roses. She pulled her hand back and touched her face. The mirror Amber touched her own face. Jade tapped the mirror again, and her reflection reached out toward the surface in unison.

After a few more moments of introspection, Jade closed the closet and reached for her smartphone. She had never used the “selfie” function before, so it took some finagling before the front-facing camera turned on. Jade saw her sister’s face on the phone, just like she had in the vanity.

I’ve turned into Amber, she thought, then assumed she was dreaming, since turning into her sister was not possible. Jade slapped her own arm, which had turned into Amber’s silky, hairless arm. She hit herself softly at first, then harder. She slapped her face, even harder, and watched as a red hand mark stained her sister’s beautiful face in the phone’s camera.

This isn’t a dream; this is a nightmare. When Jade was little, and she had nightmares, she would wake herself up by jumping from something high off the ground. She might climb a bookshelf or ladder, then jump off and wake up. If there was nothing nearby to climb, or if jumping from a mundane object didn’t work, Jade would wake herself up by jumping out of a window.

Dreams can read your mind, she knew, so she had to work quickly and with little thought. If she gave the nightmare too much time, it might figure out what she was up to, and try to stop her. Jade raced across her room, flung open her window and climbed onto the windowsill, and then she jumped. A nanosecond too late, she realized that she was not dreaming.

As she fell, a sudden instinct overtook her. She felt movement under her skin again, and she sensed she was lighter and smaller than before. I am a bird, she thought, I can fly; I am a bright bluebird. She pictured a bluebird in her head.

Not an actual bluebird, because she’d never seen one, but the drawing of one she’d seen in an ornithology book. She repeated the idea of a bird and its image over and over in her mind.

Blue feathers burst from her arms, her face elongated, and she was no longer falling—she was flying. As a bluebird, Jade landed on her windowsill. She perched there, thinking in a mix of Jade thoughts and bird thoughts. Jade investigated her bedroom, her bluebird eyes resting on Amber’s dress, which was now an abandoned lump of green cloth on the floor.

She heard someone approaching her door, so she flew inside, transforming back into Jade as she landed on the floor.

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I’m an author and an English and Communications professor from Rochester, NY. I’m an insatiable reader and a dedicated writer. I’ve spent many years honing my skills and I now enjoy helping others find and explore their own voices. I write fantasy and science fiction and I aim to captivate and inspire. I’ve written two published novels: a modern mythology titled Honey, which came out in 2013 and Forever People, a cyberpunk science fiction slated to come out in the spring of 2019. I also regularly contribute poetry and short stories to literary magazines.

Alison Lyke | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

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My thoughts:

This was a really fun sci-fi adventure, with Jade and Antigone travelling through multiple worlds trying to get back home and repair the strange anomalies that the dimensional shift has created.

Funny, engaging and clever, I really enjoyed reading this and as Jade comes out of her shell and starts to develop more, she grew on me, although I liked Antigone, she was probably a bit too much for her quieter friend. Their new found powers could be very useful or very dangerous, I just hope in their next adventure they make good decisions!

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.