The Last Humans: A New Dawn…
This sequel is now in the pipeline with Black Opal Books, so I thought I’d give it a bit of publicity long before it’s published to create some anticipation. Didn’t read the first book? Okay, you can do it in this new year and decade. You’ll have plenty of time too. It takes a while to get a book through the pipeline.
Unlike most sequels, this one can be read independently if you’re so inclined to read out of order (I often do that myself as a reader). It’s also very different, something I’ll analyze a bit in this post.
First, Penny Castro has an established family now. After everything I put the ex-USN diver and LA County Sheriff’s deputy through in the post-apocalyptic thriller The Last Humans, she deserved a bit of normalcy and R&R, although I’m sure some moms will beat me up for saying that giving birth to two kids is R&R (a non-fictional apocalypse might occur if suddenly men were the ones who had to give birth!). Husband Alex is the proud papa of those young ones, and Penny and he are adopted parents for the orphaned Sammy. Old Ben, who has become the adopted patriarch of the family, is still around too. They’re living the post-apocalyptic Californian and American dream on their own citrus ranch in the San Joaquin Valley.
Their idyllic lives at El Ranchito are turned upside down when what remains of the US government now decides it wants revenge against the country that launched the bio attack on the US West Coast in the first book. That went around the world on the prevailing winds killing billions, including most people in the country that launched the attack. Penny and Alex don’t volunteer for that revenge mission. They’re forced to participate in the plan, though, because the government kidnaps their small children to make them sign on. Goodbye R&R and normalcy; hello mission prep and chaos. The rest of the story is about how this all plays out.
Second, whereas the first book was a post-apocalyptic thriller, the sequel is more a classical thriller. The first book was written in the first person because it’s the story about Penny’s survival adventures. The sequel is in the third person from multiple characters’ point-of-view because it’s not only the story about Penny and Alex but involves those in the US government and the new leaders of that country that attacked the US.
In fact, the extensive cast of characters make this new novel an epic tale of war and peace. Okay, its length isn’t even close to the one for Tolstoy’s magnum opus that I’ve never been able to finish (I’ve read Dostoyevsky and Pasternak, though—parts of the latter even in Russian, a language I’ve mostly forgotten now although I can still read Cyrillic because it’s largely phonetic, like Spanish). But this new story has epic proportions in my mind—call it a condensed epic. Readers already know how Penny’s mind works from the first book. Here they can peek into the minds of people who make future history in their attempts to save a world…or sometimes attempting to destroy it even more. It’s also about war and peace and power struggles. Human beings don’t seem to learn.
I hope this brief description tempts you. I also hope you have patience and add this book to your TBR (“To Be Read”) list right now. I’m sure I will write more about this sequel in this blog, so stay tuned as it moves along Black Opal’s pipeline toward publication.
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Comments are always welcome.
The Last Humans. LA Sheriff’s Deputy Penny Castro surfaces from a forensic dive and finds the apocalypse: a bio attack on the US’s West Coast is carried around the world, killing billions. Penny’s struggles in the post-apocalyptic world aren’t pretty but represent that quintessential human will to survive even the worst calamities. Follow her adventures in this tale that will make you ask, “Could this really happen?” Available at Amazon and the publisher, Black Opal Books; also at Smashwords and all its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.)
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
