The great thing about being a micro publisher is the joy of finding a piece of writing that stimulates your imagination, startles visions in your mind and stuns your heart with sparks of simple wonder. And then, you get to publish it!
The first I knew of J.M. Kay’s science fiction novel, Under the Shadow: Children of the First Star, Volume 1 was listening to Mr. Kay read aloud during an evening writer’s group. The language captured me with the delight of hearing an entirely new perspective on being lost in space. The protagonists, 13-year-olds, Jason and Daniel, have been accidently abducted by an alien being. With the travel sequence already underway and no means of reversing its course, the human boys are in need of space suits or they will not survive:
“Jason stepped onto the metal sheet, as curious as he was frightened as to how this was going to keep him alive. Almost instantaneously, Jason’s feet felt warm, like he’d dipped into a temperate bath. He looked down to discover that the flat sheet of solid metal had liquefied into a large blob, held together by surface tension. The fluid snaked its way up his body, conforming to his shape, but Jason felt no foreign material or any added weight.
Then without warning, the liquid metal poured into his mouth and down his throat. Jason gagged and flailed about as he felt the metal fill him from within. Though there was no heat scalding his innards, he was aware of the substance like an itch he had no power to scratch. The sensation intensified, and Jason clawed at his mouth to pry away the viscid metal. Just when the itch became intolerable, the sensation abated, leaving a dull heaviness he couldn’t describe.
A voice that sounded like rustling leaves spoke to Jason from within … There was a bizarre intelligence to the voice, and he knew as surely as his brain was hearing understandable words, his other organs, muscle and bone were being talked to in languages that they too could interpret.
“What do you need?” the voice asked, like a doctor examining a patient. He tried to answer, but was stopped by a gentle clutching of the substance on the exterior of his body. The answer instead emerged from his organs and blood, his sinew and bone, and deeper still to the elements and molecules that made these things: water, oxygen, proteins, enzymes, triglycerides, polypeptides, amino acids, metabolized energy … the essential needs of his existence emanated from him as an interlocking code of sensations, instructing the suit that now surrounded him inside and out, on how to keep him alive.”
I was hooked right then and there. And I’m looking forward to Volume II!
posted by Valerie C. Woods
on May, 06