by C.S.
Hand
Genre: YA Dystopian
Release date: August 8th 2018
Summary:
For fans of Divergent, Red Rising, and The Hunger Games comes a gripping new tale of ambition, treachery, and love.
When what appears as a prank on arrogant ambassadors at an exotic vacation city turns out to be the first tremors of a revolution, the Enlightened Council of Castillia turns to its 11-year old undefeated military prodigy and her loyal Guardians for help.
After all, it was Innocence who liberated the Jewel of All Cities in the first place. Everyone knows she will be the last to let it slip from her grasp.
But why would anyone want to leave Castillia? Its laws are just. Its Council is democratically elected. It has liberated more cities than any other Republic, past or present.
But Castillia has enemies, that’s for sure.
Sedition is the favorite trick of the southern Republic Ausonia. In fact, the exotic vacation city used to belong to Ausonia—and they have always wanted it back.
But could those hedonists really organize anything between all their dancing and drinking?
Or has Vesper, the mighty Republic to the North finally woken from its slumber? It has plenty of old scores to settle with Castillia and it’s palm-lined streets.
Squashing the uprising and re-uniting the town and her city could be the perfect way to end the most legendary military career Castillia has ever known and begin a new, exhilarating life as a prominent politician.
But it also might just be the perfect way to start what Innocence has secretly always yearned for: her own Empire.
Genre: YA Dystopian
Release date: August 8th 2018
Summary:
For fans of Divergent, Red Rising, and The Hunger Games comes a gripping new tale of ambition, treachery, and love.
When what appears as a prank on arrogant ambassadors at an exotic vacation city turns out to be the first tremors of a revolution, the Enlightened Council of Castillia turns to its 11-year old undefeated military prodigy and her loyal Guardians for help.
After all, it was Innocence who liberated the Jewel of All Cities in the first place. Everyone knows she will be the last to let it slip from her grasp.
But why would anyone want to leave Castillia? Its laws are just. Its Council is democratically elected. It has liberated more cities than any other Republic, past or present.
But Castillia has enemies, that’s for sure.
Sedition is the favorite trick of the southern Republic Ausonia. In fact, the exotic vacation city used to belong to Ausonia—and they have always wanted it back.
But could those hedonists really organize anything between all their dancing and drinking?
Or has Vesper, the mighty Republic to the North finally woken from its slumber? It has plenty of old scores to settle with Castillia and it’s palm-lined streets.
Squashing the uprising and re-uniting the town and her city could be the perfect way to end the most legendary military career Castillia has ever known and begin a new, exhilarating life as a prominent politician.
But it also might just be the perfect way to start what Innocence has secretly always yearned for: her own Empire.
It's 50% off on launch day for the eBook (August 8, 2018)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FY4WK18
Salute
“As long as the enemy is not defeated, he may
defeat me; then I shall no longer be my own master; he will dictate the law to
me as I did to him.”
Clausewitz
When I was six I commanded the Sun
Battalion to charge the center of Ausonia’s forces at Serenissima, the most
beautiful and opulent city on this planet.
Every single man, woman, and child from that
legendary unit died in the melee.
But it broke Ausonia’s center and then we out
flanked them—on both sides.
Ausonians begged for their lives,
but when you lose your Republic’s most famous battalion you cannot allow for
survivors.
Even if you have just stolen the jewel of cities from an enemy’s grasp.
When I was seven I saw my own army
nearly overrun.
That was until I came out from my command hub
and grabbed the banner from a fleeing Guardian and turned Lazarus on, then began
sweeping through the enemy’s ranks with my sword of trembling lightning.
That was the first time I had ever been shot
more than thirteen times.
When I was eight I had to execute my
second-in-command for treason. We were low on ammunition and my lightning blade
wouldn’t turn on, so I had to do it with a rock.
When I was nine I led a
lightning-sabre charge straight into the heart of Vesper’s Hyper Accelerated
Rifles.
Everyone but a child named Beatrice was mowed
down.
But between myself and Beatrice and the
second, third, and fourth fearless waves we cut them to pieces.
The problem with Hyper Accelerated Rifles is
if they fire too fast for too long they overheat and then don’t fire at all.
That was not the first time I had killed
defenseless human beings—and enjoyed it.
When I was ten I ambushed Jacob
Heist and his band of outlaws who were traveling to various cities in the South
preaching about freedom and liberation and brotherhood—the very ideals my City
was founded upon.
They said we were the very opposite of those
things and that we were what they called a “Dysotpia,” which is a new word used
by uneducated thugs to incite rebellions against people like me.
When we ambushed them on the shore
and they didn’t even try to run I assumed it was because they knew it was over.
They had no weapons but refused to surrender,
even after I offered it to them a second time.
So we murdered the band of outlaws and
searched for the weapon we knew we would find, “The Chariot Buster,” which they
usually used to blow our ships out of the sky.
Heist and his gang loved to beam our
hovercrafts into vapor, like he did the previous seventeen times we tried to
ambush him. In fact, he did it so much, we called it “bait and beam.”
But all we found in his traveling caravan were
hundreds of copies of an unsettling novel from some ancient planet about an elf
and a minotaur who overthrow an entire world.
If that isn’t criminal literature worthy of
suppression then I don’t know what is.
What I also didn’t know was that we were being
recorded and streamed live over an inventive social media application called
Periscope.
So it looked like I butchered a peaceful
intellectual on a paradisiacal white sand beach in spite of his repeated cries
for mercy and justice.
Blogs went crazy.
They reported that we murdered them when they
were defenseless and did terrible things to their corpses.
What they didn’t mention is that my dogs were
starving and that we had a long march back. We weren’t going to be the ones
eaten alive.
Besides, you can’t take heavy machinery on an
ambush.
The outlaw preachers would have heard us
coming miles away.
So I had to take the dogs.
And the dogs had to eat.
There were hundreds of uprisings.
I crushed them all.
My City stood by my side. Esteemed Council
members lost their seats because of me, some had attempts made on their lives,
and some were successfully assassinated.
That’s when I learned someone can strike at
you even from death, and when possible never turn an enemy, who is mortal and
fallible, into a martyr, who is infallible and immortal.
I’m eleven now, and this is my last year as
Commander.
After this year I will retire from my duties
as a Guardian of the Republic, squelching rebellions from the other cities who
never pay their tributes on time, are never fair in their dealings, and are
always plotting against my perfect, beautiful City.
Oh, my name is Innocence—which as far as I can
tell is just some made-up word.
About the
Author
C. S. Hand loves philosophy, literature, and science-fiction and fantasy books. He studied British Romanticism at Cambridge before leaving to translate great science-fiction and fantasy books. You can read more about his 3 great loves here.
C. S. Hand loves philosophy, literature, and science-fiction and fantasy books. He studied British Romanticism at Cambridge before leaving to translate great science-fiction and fantasy books. You can read more about his 3 great loves here.
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