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
Your trailers are so great!
Sounds like a must read to me.
You have the best imagination :0)
Another great story. I love the conflict.
What an interesting twist! Great conflict.