BooksChatter: ☀ Precipice: The Backworlds [6]

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Precipice (3 May 2015) a science fiction space opera adventure by author M Pax; the sixth book in The Backworlds series.

Boing Boing gives The Backworlds 5 stars! "This is a fun, fast paced novel that reminded me a bit of early Heinlein"

Check out the book's synopsis and the excerpt below.
You can also read the first five chapters of Precipice on Amazon (see link below) and get yourself the first two books in the Backworld series for FREE.

Author M Pax will be awarding a $40 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts, also the more comments you leave the higher your chances of being a winner.

Synopsis | Teaser | The Series | Author Q&A | About the Author | Giveaway & Tour Stops

Synopsis

In the far future, humanity settles the stars, bioengineering its descendants to survive in a harsh universe.

The Backworlds hang by a Quantum string, a thread about to snap. Annihilation is coming if Craze can’t stop it.

The genocidal alien he had trapped breaks free, destroying a ship belonging to the Backworlds’ oldest enemy, the Fo’wo’s. The murderous alien wants to overtake the galaxy. The Fo’wo’s want another war.

The Backworlds’ best chance to survive is to overcome a century of hate and forge an alliance with the Fo’wo’s. Because of his history with the alien, Craze is recruited to represent his people. Now he’s the most hated man in the galaxy.

The looming war will be a holocaust unless he can stop it, knowing salvation comes at a price.

Teaser: Excerpt

Engaging the thrusters on the jetpack strapped to her back, Rainly steered herself through space. Its vastness terrified her. Her skin prickled. The man in the white robe jabbering in her head overwhelmed her, blocking out all until she found herself back on the Sequi opening the box she had retrieved. She had hoped answering the man’s summons would end her blackouts.

“I don’t want to know what I did,” she whispered, her teeth chattering and limbs quaking. She couldn’t take much more of this.

The size and dimensions of a coffin, the box was also a ship. One more sophisticated than the Sequi. Using a control paddle, Rainly maneuvered a dolly under the box, then she wheeled it into the living quarters. Her sister had moved the couches, creating ample space.

Her hands clapping, her sister beamed. “Let’s meet our master.”

Together they pried open the chamber per instructions pulsing in Rainly’s head. The flood of data had to be making a clamor in her sister’s mind too, because she moved in the same ways.

Inside the box lay a brain in a sac of goo. Nothing like Rainly expected. “Is it a Fo’wo?” she asked her sister.

“Not yet. We have to reboot him first.”

Rainly had to wonder whether she and her sister had gone insane.

Precipice - available NOW!

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The Backworlds Series

A galactic adventure. In the far future, humanity settles the stars, bioengineering its descendants to survive in a harsh universe.

The Backworlds - Try it for free!

After the war with the Foreworlders, Backworlders scatter across the remaining planets. Competition is fierce, and pickings are scant. Scant enough that Craze’s father decides to improve his fortunes by destroying his son. He tells his only boy their moon isn’t big enough for them both and gives Craze a ticket for the next transport leaving the space dock.

Treated worse than a stranger, like the scuzzbag of the galaxy, Craze is forced to flee his home. Cut off from everyone he knows with little money and no knowledge of the worlds beyond his, he must find a way to forge a new life and make sure his father regrets this day.

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Revenge is on Craze’s mind. He chews on it everyday along with the relentless dust on Pardeep Station. He dreams of grander business and wealth, enough to make his father choke.

That’s the dream consuming him when the interstellar portal opens, spitting out a ship that that should no longer exist. A battleship spoiling for a fight, yet the war with the Foreworlds ended two generations ago.

The enemy takes over Craze’s tavern and aims their dastardly guns in his face. One wrong move and the shaky truce will end. So will Craze and his friends.

Boomtown Craze

To realize his dream, to build Pardeep Station into a top world, a destination all Backworlders want to come to, Craze makes the best use of a weapon left behind by the Foreworlders. The dastardly technology helps him to forge advantageous trades, which improves his situation on the dusty moon.

Only days away from the grand opening of his shiny new tavern, the starway opens, bringing in a loony Backworlder intent on mucking up Craze’s carefully laid plans. Gaunt and trembling, she claims her spaceship is possessed. She also has a connection to the underworld that shakes loose the dark past of one of Craze’s closest friends. It all threatens to end his prosperity before it begins.

Meanwhile off world, Captain Talos works desperately to outwit the mercenary Jixes and lure them away from Pardeep Station’s budding prospects. With all the trading done on Pardeep’s behalf, the mind-control weapon Talos is using wears thin, and his next move may be his last.

Will it end in boom or dust?

Beyond the Edge

Some truths are better left unfound.

For two years Craze’s dear friend, Lepsi, has been missing. The murmurings of a haunted spaceship might be a message and may mean his old pal isn’t dead. The possibility spurs Craze and Captain Talos to travel to uncharted worlds, searching. Out there, in an unfamiliar region of the galaxy beyond the Backworlds, they stumble upon a terrible truth.

Meanwhile, Rainly remains on Pardeep Station as acting planetlord, dealing with the discovery of her lover’s dark and brutal past. Alone and questioning her judgment, her introspection unlocks more than heartache. Latent protocols in her cybernetics activate, forcing her to face a sinister secret of her own.

Worlds on Edge

War is coming. A horde of merciless aliens poise just beyond the Edge. In a matter of weeks they will devour the worlds.

Racing ahead of the apocalypse, Craze returns to the Backworlds to warn them and plan a defense. Only he can’t go home. Banned from Pardeep Station, he must wage a more urgent battle. His moon is under siege, and his friends are dying.

Bad things come in threes, and the galaxy is no exception. An old enemy returns, attacking moons and defenseless globes, leaving a wake of destruction. Worse than that, they threaten to join forces with the alien horde.

Defeat seems inevitable. Craze may not be able to stop it. Yet home is worth the fight.

About the Author

M. Pax is author of the space adventure series The Backworlds and the contemporary science fiction series The Rifters, plus other novels and short stories.

Fantasy, science fiction, and the weird beckons to her, and she blames Oregon, a source of endless inspiration.

She docents at Pine Mountain Observatory in the summers as a star guide, has a cat with a crush on Mr. Spock, and is slightly obsessed with Jane Austen.