Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

Would you be interested to review the recently released ebook “Sapphire Hunting”?

Genre: YA Science Fantasy
Length: 73K

Blurb: “When James goes to college, he is full of optimism. He is going to make a name for himself. He has always been able to solve those tricky little problems.

But then he finds bullying social club students, pretentious professors and financial hardships are ready to make achieving success an uphill struggle.

But James is still an optimist.

And James has found networks of energy form a framework through all the worlds and all the lives that people live, in all the times and all the places where they live them.

But something is coming, malignant, hopping on the foci, streaming into James’ passive existence to harvest his friends and push in on the barriers of the world.

Will he be able to fight it?”

Goodreads link:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

(This is a re-imagining – 70% rewrite – of a story briefly available 4 years ago. The listed reviews for the 2011 story remain.) Sample chapters can be downloaded from the above link.

If your interest should be piqued, I would be happy to send you a copy in .epub, .mobi or .pdf.

To whet your appetite...

Excerpt 1: “The ride was angling sharply up again. He stretched. He grabbed at the trusses or rafters or whatever they were. He managed to thrust one foot out into the angle of the wall between the floor and wall. While aiming a foot at the other wall Saesile landed against him, behind him, and pushed up with her back to him so she was standing. ‘Thank you,’ she gasped. His foot flailed as he pushed out to the other wall, and then they were balanced, perforations sliding along the middle of the floor between his braced legs, his body a forward-facing strut. Jamy had tumbled into a folded crouch with his head behind James’ thigh.
‘Don’t mention it. What is this place?’ James whispered crazily.
Lest they should relax, a wrecking-yard like crash sounded ahead. The sound of something big and destructive came in a smashing boom down the arc where they were heading, beyond the horizon, somehow worse because they could not see what it was. Saesile craned around him to look for what was coming. As the motion tilted them up again the others grabbed him. James braced his limbs. It was heavy. ‘Look there!’ Jamy cried out.
‘Wha?’ James panted. Jamy hammered on his leg and pointed, wordless.
Ahead on the left a gap larger than the others appeared, revealing what appeared to be a platform. The window raced past them. There was no time. James saw Jamy let go, roll, grasp and hitch himself up. James flailed for it but the platform had whirled past him. Damn. The wheel pulled James around, still heedlessly braced, the crashing sound ahead of him. Tilted up to a profile which was almost horizontal, hanging on and losing his grip, he was not strong enough. His hold slipped. He felt himself falling, rolling backwards along the curve of the tunnel, gravity doing him right, rolling back before he realised toward that blessed platform-thing and to Jamy’s reaching arm, and Saesile’s body forming a bridge. He felt himself dragged up, bumping on every angle while watching the stone aperture closing in on him. Suddenly he was through, flat on a floor. He gasped like a landed fish. He wheezed, ‘bump,’ and raised knuckles towards Jamy.
Jamy looked at the proffered fist with a perplexed expression.
‘Hang on,’ James puffed, lowering hand and head while he swallowed a few lungs full of air. The others were watching as his shoulders rose up and fell down once, twice, three times. ‘Here,’ he said then. He felt a determination. By touch, head still lowered, he took hold of Jamy’s nearer hand and he guided the fingers on it in to close. He touched his own swelled knuckles to Jamy’s, experiencing in the action a little pain, because now everything hurt and was hot. ‘Bump,’ James explained, gently.
Jamy touched their fists again. ‘Bump,’ he said. ‘Bump,’ he said, swinging around to present his fist to Saesile. Saesile, meanwhile, had been sitting as she landed, sprawled as an L, legs straight out ahead, arms limp and contemplating her feet. She looked at Jamy for a while, smiled a little and proffered her fist.
‘The theory says, if we need to set up a beacon,’ Saesile said, getting up on her knees and looking forward and back, ‘a lot of places will see it from here.’ She stood tentatively and dusted her knees off. What dust? James thought, it’s polished here, unsullied, not lived in. ‘From a fort,’ James said, tentatively.
She corrected him. ‘From a landship.’”

Excerpt 2: “Saesile leaned down to his face. ‘A happy thought, James.’ James pushed himself off the cushioning levitation of the bots and limped over to the door, irritated, sorry for himself, and sorry for feeling irritated. ‘Feel it?’ she asked. James’ realised his feet felt floaty. It rushed back to him, his recollection, that he was lighter here. He nodded, quickly.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m so tired, though.’ Outside James was astonished by the dark. But the pink paths were still just visible because of their paleness like a tracery of veins. They half-walked, half-loped, in that easy style, all across the terraces and downwards in floating hops, lights flickering below, lights crossing a landscape in seconds looking like tame lightning, all across the midnight plains below, carrier lines that stretched out, they wavered like lit spidersilk. They found the tram platform he remembered, easily because it was lit by a bowed hanging lantern.”

Is that a draft? Is it going to be edited before you offer it to reviewers or are you looking for beta readers?

"Is that a draft? Is it going to be edited before you offer it to reviewers or are you looking for beta readers?"

I would love to know the answer to this as well.