What do you do when you’re guilty of a crime but not the one for which you’re convicted?  If you’re Aric kan Ingan, you keep silent, and try to find a way to discover the evidence to prove your innocence…even if it takes the rest of your life.

In Sinner, the first story featuring Aric kan Ingan, then Crown-Prince of Arcanis, the moral of the story was:  Don’t fall in love with your uncle’s wife, especially if she’s a power-mad schemer who’ll toss you aside if she has to make a choice.  In Exile, in which Aric is now a Non-Person, light-years from home and never expecting to return, the lesson is:  If you find love, don’t question it, just enjoy it and try to keep it as long as you can, even if you'd rather be out trying to find the ones who framed you.

It’s now been ten years since the former Prince Tannist was found guilty of treason in a trial held in absentia, and given the choice of execution or exile from the planet.  Aric chose exile and sometimes, as now, he wonders if he made the right choice.  Having taken Exile’s Vows, which involve embracing poverty, chastity, and personal deprivation, he is now designated a Non-Person, which means he has absolutely no Rights at all and is lower than the lowest form of life on any planet.   He takes jobs no one else will touch, works in places not even beggars will frequent.  For his troubles, he gets beaten, injured, and several times almost killed, with no recourse to justice through the Law because of his lack of status.  To ease the pain of those injuries, he’s become addicted to the two most powerful substances in the galaxy, Numbers One and Two on the Federation Surgeon General’s List of Prosocribes:  Caffeine and Nicotine.  Yep, that's right...in this future universe, coffee and tobacco are completely illegal, and therefore, are a very sought-after item on the interplanetary Black Market.

Currently, Aric is so low he has to reach up to touch bottom.


In a desperate attempt to earn some money legally, he enlists as a guard for a Terran mining company which has been given permission to work the diamontium on a small planet called Pyras, and immediately the former noble finds himself smack-dab in the middle of a bunch of Milkies—the citizens of the Milky Way—who just happen to be the people he hates most in all the galaxy.  At this point, it’s a case of if you can’t keep away from ’em, you join ’em, so Aric sets out to learn about Terrans and some of their confusing customs and habits, from Terran holidays, such as GivingThanks and Christomas, and characters such as Sant’ Niclas, and Rudolf Crimson Nose, and of celebrating one's natal day.  He suffers the near-lethal effects of aspirin and chocolate on his species, and discovers that, for certain females, it’s always open-season on a man with a vow of chastity.  His meeting with Miles Sheffield, younger brother of the fickle and power-hungry Elizabeth doesn’t start well.  Within minutes of their introduction, they’re battering each other unconscious in a dormitory corridor, but occasionally, hate-at-first-sight will make the best of friends.  And then there’s Susan Moran, doctor for the mining colony…a beautiful woman with a secret, and the one person on Pyras Aric could learn to love, if he was allowed.

Life is continuing to change for Aric, and his stay on Pyras is only part of that change.  It won’t be an easy one, but it’s definitely going to happen, and it all takes him one step closer to his goal of returning Home.



Exile, Book 2 of the kan Ingan Archives is available from Double Dragon Publishing: http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/single.php?ISBN=1-55404-947-4

3 comments

  1. Mary Ricksen // May 26, 2012 at 6:21 PM  

    Your trailers are so great!
    Sounds like a must read to me.
    You have the best imagination :0)

  2. Mary Marvella // May 26, 2012 at 11:57 PM  

    Another great story. I love the conflict.

  3. Josie // May 27, 2012 at 5:35 PM  

    What an interesting twist! Great conflict.