Hi everyone! This is my post during the blog tour for The Chosen Twelve by James Breakwell. The Hunger Games meets Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in this breathless survival thriller. Be sure to check out the excerpt and enter the giveaway!
This blog tour is organized by Lola's Blog Tours and the tour runs from 18 till 31 January. You can see the tour schedule here.
By James Breakwell
Genre: Science Fiction /Thriller
Age category: Adult
Release Date: 18 January 2021
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing
Blurb:
There are 22 candidates. There are 12 seats.
The last interstellar colony ship is down to its final batch of humans after the robots in charge unhelpfully deleted the rest. But rebooting a species and training them for the arduous task of colonisation isn’t easy – especially when the planet below is filled with monsters, the humans are more interested in asking questions than learning, and the robots are all programmed to kill each other.
But the fate of humanity rests on creating a new civilization on the planet below, and there are twelve seats on the lander. Will manipulation or loyalty save the day?
The Hunger Games meets Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in this breathless survival thriller.
EXCERPT:
Chapter 1
GOD LIVED IN the coffee maker on deck four. Only Gamma knew. But Gamma didn’t make it out that way very often because it was a long journey through the outer halls and he always had schoolwork and also the door wanted to kill him.
Gamma eyed the doorway carefully. Sure, it looked wide open. The door was recessed in the frame with all its indicator lights off. A less wary organic might march right through and ask God a question, but Gamma knew better. He remembered.
How long had it been? Four thousand days. No. He had been counting for four thousand days. But there had been many more days before that, indistinct and unchanging, between the day Mu went out the airlock and the day Gamma started keeping track, secretly scratching a metal line below his bunk every night when he went to bed. And it had been even longer since a dishwasher killed Chi, even though Edubot denied it and tried to pretend Chi had never existed at all. Gamma didn’t start counting after Chi died, but he didn’t know he would need to. Gamma was a young and naive eleven-year-old back then. How much time passed between Chi’s death and the day Gamma turned twelve, God only knew.
Four thousand days ago, Gamma was twelve. Today, Gamma was twelve. That’s what Edubot said. But Gamma had taken Calculus IX enough times to know the math didn’t add up. Somebody was lying.
Gamma stuck out his arm and waved it in the doorway. The recessed door didn’t react. The threshold was covered in a layer of dust undisturbed by machine tracks or organic feet. It was possible the door hadn’t closed at all in the last four thousand days. If anything, that just made it more dangerous. The door was patient.
Spenser whirred his brushes apprehensively. Gamma had told him to stay behind, but the small vacuum bot came anyway. It was futile to try to get him to leave Gamma’s side.
“Shhh,” Gamma said.
Spenser repeated his apprehensive whir, but quieter. It didn’t matter. The door knew they were both there, even if it was pretending to be dead. It had a ghost.
Gamma looked back down the abandoned hall. It wasn’t too late to return to the colony ship. If he ran at full speed, he might still make it to class in a few hours, assuming he didn’t cross paths with any other hostile digital life. That was a big “if.” But by some miracle, he had made it this far safely enough. There was no sense in pressing his luck. Better to return to the colony ship and live to take Calculus IX a sixth time.
Gamma took one last look at the door and the coffee machine, then turned and walked away. He dragged his feet a little and did his best to whistle, even though he had never learned how. Spenser pivoted to watch him go.
He remained beside the door.
Twenty meters down the hall, Gamma changed direction and sprinted toward the door. He jumped and planted both feet right before the threshold. His balance wavered, his torso leaning forward, both arms windmilling. He regained his balance and fell backward, away from the door. He landed hard on his tailbone.
The door remained inert. It was a cunning foe.
Spenser rolled forward and bumped gently into Gamma.
“I’m fine,” Gamma said. He stood and brushed off his dusty hands against his jumpsuit. Other than his own foot (and now hand and butt) prints, and Spenser’s narrow tracks beside them, there was no sign of life in the hall. Nothing had been down this way for a very long time. God chose this place for a reason. He liked to be alone.
“Can you hear me?!” Gamma shouted through the open doorway. The coffee maker remained as inactive as the door. God might be all-knowing, but his ears could use some work.
Spenser rolled through the doorway.
“Spenser, no!” Gamma said, but it was too late. Spenser was already on the other side.
Links:
- Goodreads
- Amazon
- Amazon paperback
- B&N
- Kobo
- Rebellion Publishing
James Breakwell is a professional comedy writer and amateur father of four girls, ages ten and under. He is best known for his family humor Twitter account @XplodingUnicorn, which has more than a million followers. He has published three comedy parenting books that explore hot button issues like the benefits of doing as little as possible and the best ways to protect your child from zombie attacks. His fourth book, Prance Like No One’s Watching: A Guided Journal for Exploding Unicorns, teaches kids to find humor in the world around them while also avoiding the undead. The Chosen Twelve will be James' science fiction debut. He lives in Indiana, US.
Author links:
- Website
- Goodreads
- Youtube
Giveaway
There is a tour wide giveaway for the blog tour of The Chosen Twelve. This giveaway is open international. These are the prizes you can win:
- 3 paperback copies of The Chosen Twelve by James Breakwell
- 3 ecopies of The Chosen Twelve by James Breakwell
For a chance to win, enter the rafflecopter below: a Rafflecopter giveaway
I haven’t read this but it does sound like a pretty good book.
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