Now that we’ve posted twelve chapters of Guy Stewart’s YA adventure novel, Heirs of the Shattered Spheres: Emerald of Earth, this seemed like a good time to take a short break and review the story thus far. If you haven’t yet met Emerald, this is a good time to start reading her story. If you started reading the serial but missed a chapter or two and couldn’t find your place again, through the magic of HTML, the links to chapters you’ve already read should be in a different color than the links to the chapters you haven’t read yet. And if you’ve been putting off reading the story because you wanted to binge-read the entire thing in one sitting: here you go!
PREMISE
Almost-thirteen Emerald Marcillon lives with her parents, two archaeologists who are excavating Chicxilub Crater in Yucatan. Her parents have found ancient artifacts which they claim prove the existence of aliens, and that support their “Shattered Spheres” theory explaining certain anomalies in the Solar System, including Venus’s retrograde rotation, Uranus’s offset axis of rotation, and Mercury’s odd resemblance to Earth’s Moon.
Emerald Marcillon lives with her parents on a beach near the Chicxilub impact crater in Yucatan, Mexico. The soldiers who’ve shown up at the dig think she’s shy, but her parents say she is a high functioning autistic. Some soldiers were digging holes in the jungle, some talked to her parents, asking for evidence of aliens visiting Earth. She didn’t know why the soldiers were there, though. So, a spectacular cook, Emerald feeds them and listens carefully.
CHAPTER 2: BURIED BOX IN THE JUNGLE
Emerald meets Rashida, whose job it is to keep her safe and under control. Emerald escapes, but stumbles on someone digging in the jungle.
Emerald returns home to find her parents presenting their Shattered Spheres theory explaining anomalies in the Solar System – Venus’ retrograde rotation, Uranus’ north pole south of the equator, Mercury’s resemblance to Earth’s moon. Then they argue, and she flees into the jungle.
Emerald stays out all night and discovers a plastic crate that’s been dug up. Her parents have more back home. She heads to her tent on the beach. Then she hears the sound of knives stabbing into the sand—then a whoosh! An explosion, and then there is only Emerald who knows that her parents weren’t crazy.
Waking up in a hospital, Emerald knows her parents are dead. She tries to escape the hospital, but ends up in “therapy”. Even though Rashida is watching her, she manages to slip out before they drug her senseless.
CHAPTER 6: FLEEING EARTH, INTO SPACE
Acting under orders from someone or something called SOLAREX, Rashida once again catches up with Emerald. Her orders are to take her up the Beanstalk and turn her over to her great-aunt, who it turns out is a vice captain of the SOLAREX, a great space exploration vessel. Emerald is bored, until Rashida says, “Whatever killed your parents will come after you.”
CHAPTER 7: EMERALD AND THE BEANSTALK
Emerald is a gifted hacker, using her innocent looks to pretend to be stupid. She prepares for the trip up, and as soon as they’re in the Beanstalk’s ascent car she escapes from Rashida again and gets into the vertical access tube. When she finds out they’re going to flood it with gas to kill pests, she finds the only way out is through the door above that’s marked DANGER!
Opening the DANGER door, Emerald climbs to the highest part of the car. In an access tube from which she can see the outside, the Beanstalk car moves into space. Relaxing, she sees that there’s something on the ‘stalk. Something strange and the crew doesn’t seem to notice. Emerald reluctantly gives herself away to warn them.
CHAPTER 9: EMERALD UNDER ARREST
Placed under arrest and on her way to see her great aunt, Emerald discovers that SOLAREX is going to stop at every planet in the Solar System for one year and do a complete survey of each planet and its moons. With Emerald in plastic cuffs, Rashida takes her over to the ship.
Finding out that SOLAREX has…biological elevators…Emerald and Rashida get out in the Core. There’s a weird space-game like hockey, football, and gravity-modified ballet being broadcast to screaming fans. She forces Rashida to take her to her room. Emerald escapes again…
Once back to the Core, she avoids the Jump fan mob, and heads away from them into what looks like the African savannah. A group of young teens working with an old man as Zechariah Brewpub makes a mistake and is humiliated by them all. Seeing him escape through a hidden elevator, she follows him. But the elevator car won’t stop.
CHAPTER 12: VICE CAPTAIN…GREAT AUNT RUBY
Dumped out of the elevator when it abruptly stops on a hospital floor, everyone panics and Emerald is stunned. She wakes up with great aunt Ruby, who assigns her to something called an Intensive Training Team for Young Adult Career Tracks. Then she’s left alone, knowing it was going to be a VERY long twelve-year-mission…
6 comments:
I finally had a chance read what's been posted so far. It's a great read! What's the long term plan with this?
The long term plan is that Guy has already written the entire novel. The really long term plan is that he wants to do an entire multi-book YA series. However, right now, we’re waiting to see what kind of response we get from readers, before we go ahead with more chapters of the serial and start planning for the print and ebook release of the full novel.
What do you think? Do you want to see more of it serialized, or should we just move ahead to the next step, which is to release the novel?
Based on what I've read so far, I'm ready to buy. The shattered sphere theory is intriguing. Emerald is that interesting mix of capable but not perfect, determined but vulnerable, all that stuff. I had to laugh though, since I have my own version of Googazon in one of my short stories.
I hope that helps!
Guerry,
Thank you for your positive comments! As for Googazon...it just seemed like a natural merger. It also trips off the tongue easier than Amogle...
Thanks again for the encouraging comments!
Guy
Hmm. Magogazon?
Sounds like a Kaiju cross between "Notzilla" and "Monster Seafood Wars" (not kidding, they're real films...maybe SS could produce and you could direct the film?
I can just see it, "Magogazon vs CyberZilla"!!!!
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