THE MISSING PLANETS by Hawk MacKinney: Book Review and $25 GC Giveaway

Welcome to my stop on the book review tour for The Missing Planets: Vol. II of The Cairns of Sainctuarie series by Hawk MacKinney, a science fiction novel available now from Sage Words Publishing. This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Click on the banner to visit other stops on this tour.

BLURB

Planet Terato has become a member of the assembly of the Confederated League of Allied Star Systems. The Murian Outpost Terato once commanded by His Imperial Majesty’s Lord High Chamberlain Herklo Korvo XXXIV is now Teratoan staffed and under the command of Teratoan Eklam a’Qoc.

From the uncharted reaches between galaxies, attacks of extraordinary weaponry come against Terato and the Myr worlds of the Murians. Terminus Terato’s expanded link-portals and converter power modules are virtually useless. Power loss, defenses, communications and travel are totally disrupted. High Chamberlain Korvo’s unexpected return to Terminus on a mission for His Imperial Majesty leaves him stranded on Terato. Attacks grow more massive, more unpredictable; spread across the worlds of the League, as an isolated Terminus struggles among the shattered rubble and whispering remains of an ancient Polity of star-walkers.

Family and friends are lost, empires and civilizations in disarray, Terminus and Planet Terato almost defenseless. Desperate for answers, their worlds being overwhelmed by this remorseless aggressor, Eklam and Korvo reach across unexplored space in a despairing gamble and the last reserves of converter star-substrate, seeking one insignificant star system of gas giants and rocky inner planets for possible relics of the elusive Lantaraan Polity.

EXCERPT

The setting of Terato’s two suns at the end of that day stopped his short boyhood and started another life. At the graves of his parents, filled with grief, he wanted to look his grown-up best; show respect for his parents. Before dawnlit that morning he’d shaved for the first time with his father’s stropped blade, the way a man shaved. There had been a few blood-smeared nicks. He’d stopped with half of his face unshaved; looked at his reflection. He wasn’t yet old enough to have a voice in the village debates, but from that point on he would follow his parents’ guidance; honor their care for him; make his own decisions. Keep them to himself if he could, but his life would be his. Whether he shaved or not, Uncle a’Qoc would continue to treat him like a kid. Uncle a’Qoc could be gruff and strict. It was his uncle’s way. Uncle a’Qoc was never purposely unkind, just set in his ways. He didn’t want to disrespect Uncle a’Qoc. In the emptiness of death, families of the close-knit rustic farming hamlet of a’Qoc gathered to console this rangy, long-limbed youth the only way they could. The pestilence had taken many. That night Eklam a’Qoc slept in the bed he’d slept in his whole life, in an empty, echo-filled house his father had built, now no longer a home. Uncle a’Qoc would bargain it to strangers he’d never met, a young family with a new baby girl.

BOOK TRAILER

MY REVIEW

As with The Bleikovat Event (volume one in The Cairns of Santuarie series), MacKinney excels in building a world that is unique and filled with intrigue for The Missing Planets. The Missing Planets is a true science fiction novel that doesn't make for fast reading, but is definitely enjoyable. 

I especially enjoyed the relationship between Eklam and Korvo. Their struggle to find answers and solutions kept me on my reading toes to the very end. There are a lot of world-specific terms and science-related discussions. I found the glossary to be very helpful in bridging brief gaps in my understanding.

The Missing Planets offers complex world building, well-researched issues, and lots of action. I found myself plotting movie scenes as I read the book. While the majority of its fans will likely be science fiction lovers, I think that The Missing Planets has appeal for sci-fantasy readers as well.

The Missing Planets is the second volume in The Cairns of Santuarie series, but can be read as a standalone. The events of volume two happen some years after the events of volume one. If you like to know the whole story, like me, I'd recommend reading The Bleikovat Event as well. You can see my review of it here.

NOTE: I received a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

AUTHOR Bio and Links

With postgraduate degrees and faculty appointments in several medical universities, Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem. In addition to professional articles and texts on chordate neuroembryology, Hawk has authored several works of fiction.

Hawk began writing mysteries for his school newspaper. His works of fiction, historical love stories, science fiction and mystery-thrillers are not genre-centered, but plot-character driven, and reflect his southwest upbringing in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award, details the family bloodlines of his serial protagonist in the Craige Ingram Mystery Series. Vault of Secrets, the first book in the Ingram series, was followed by Nymrod Resurrection, Blood and Gold, and The Lady of Corpsewood Manor. All have received national attention. Walking the Pet is Hawk’s latest release in the Ingram series. The first book in another mystery-thriller series is scheduled for release in 2015. The Bleikovat Event, the first volume in The Cairns of Sainctuarie science fiction series, was released in 2012. Its sequel, The Missing Planets, has just been released.

Website: www.hawkmackinney.net

Publisher: www.sagewordspublishing.com

Publisher: www.archebooks.com

Book Trailers

The Bleikovat Event: http://youtu.be/-m-H8pfoh-A

Moccasin Trace: http://youtu.be/OvV8gqls688

The Missing Planets: http://youtu.be/tLOOHlQ3IYs

 

The books are available at:

www.amazon.com

www.barnesandnoble.com

GIVEAWAY

Hawk will be awarding a $25 Amazon gift card to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour via Rafflecopter

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Book Review & Giveaway: CAIRNS OF SAINCTUARIE by Hawk MacKinney

Welcome to my stop on the book review tour for Cairns of Sainctuarie (The Bleikovat Event - Book 1) by Hawk MacKinney, a 228 page Sci-Fi novel available now from Sage World Publishing. This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions.

Hawk will be awarding a $25 Amazon Gift Card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour, and a $25 Amazon Gift Card to a randomly drawn host. Click on the banner to visit other stops on this tour. Be sure to follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning.

BLURB

The Cairns of Sanctuarie: Volume I - The Bleikovat Event

Among the close-kin clans of western rural Malfesian Murians, farming and gelf ranches are long held traditions. Times are good…full barns, fat gelf calves and large families thrive among the sprawling grain fields and hamlets and the river from which they derive their name—the Feldon. Word comes with the trade caravans that times are not so good in the regions far to the east of the Feldon River: tumultuous changes stir among the remote province of Bleikovia. Old timer Feldovats shrug it off as one more squabble between clans over boundaries or water rights…too distant to affect the Feldovats.

The western clans learn too late, however, it is no local squabble. Outnumbered and unprepared, Feldovats resist a hoard bent on plunder and conquest. Days of battle along the Feldon River stain the riverbanks in green Murian blood. In the finals days of exhausted fighting, Judikar Klarvko Celo, leader of the Clan Klarvkon and the Feldovats, is fatally stabbed with the slow-acting sevon poison. The Judikar’s consort, Etikaa Klarvkaa, becomes Regentkaa, and with Celovat Field Commander Korvo Celo serving as her advisor, she leads the demoralized Feldovat survivors on a gruesome ill-prepared winter trek through high mountain passes of ice and blizzard snow in an attempt to elude the Green Dragon forces of the Bleikovats.

Etkaa’s only son, Klarvko Celo II, helps spirit Feldovat young across a remote mountain exodus to the west toward Eedov Province. The battered, starving Feldovats reach the Malfesian coast at Eedov City only to be confronted with their implacable enemy determined to destroy the remaining Klarvkon rabble. Taking passage on crowded lumbering Maalonovion freighters, Feldovats and Malfesian refugees set sail. On arrival in Maalon City they are welcomed among their Maalon hosts, and settle into a new life.

But famine and a pandemic pestilence stir old hates and nurse former ambitions. The enraged Overseers of Bleikovia move against the Klarvkons, this time bringing bloodshed to Maalonovia. The exiles from the Feldon must fight once again, but starvation and plague across the Planete Myr make it a different war from the battles along the Feldon…a na’ä blikovat…the Bleikovvat Phenomenon…an event with unexpected consequences and outcomes none could have foreseen.

Before the vendetta killing is exhausted, the Regentkaa Klarvkaa and her son are swept onto the Maalon throne, setting the Klarvkon Dynasty and the Murians toward an intergalactic golden age, and a star-flung destiny the once-agrarian Feldovats could never have envisaged.

EXCERPT

Prologue

The catafalque of the old Dowager Queen rested on the high rostrum of the Temple of the Goddess Myraa. There was little ceremony to the cremation of dead. Yet, all that had passed made this requiem for the Dowager Queen Klarvkaa Etkaa Bremanova Celovaa Bremanova symbol of the changes which had swept so many lives. Long annuals before the ascendancy of The Klarvkon Dynasty, the massive wood and granite Temple to the Goddess Myraa had been destroyed in the firestorm which laid waste Eedov City. After the close of the Malfesian War the temple was rebuilt, but not the city. On the ashes of the old temple, immense columns rose above the sanctuary and vaults. Iridescent alabaster and polished marbles greeted pilgrim supplicants who had come to the shoreline plains washed by the Green Sea.

Dowager Etkaa Klarvkaa…wife, myäat, founding matriarch of the Klarvkon Dynasty, gave hope from a time without hope. As was her wish, she would be cremated on the soil of her birth, her ashes to mingle with those of her consort, Klarvko Celo. Their son, His Imperial Majesty Klarvko Celo the Second, decreed it would be. At the enormous base of the great temple…a spectacle never seen before and seldom since those times, came an undulating ocean of banners. Some of clans which no longer existed, even the once-hated Green Dragon of Bleikovia. Murians had taken her to their hearts…and never relinquished her. Her shadow would reach across the centuries, and measure all who followed.

MY REVIEW

I won't summarize much. The blurb above pretty much says it all.

Caught up in the good life, the western clans of the Feldon failed to realize that the enemy plaguing eastern clans along the Feldon River would soon be at their doors. When the enemy finally arrived, there were no strong allies left to help them. In a bold and unusual move, the consort of the fallen Clan Klarvkon leader steps up to lead the Feldovats against enemy forces. The hardest challenges begin here.

As I read about the plight of the Feldovats, it reminded me of the famous Martin Niemöller (Protestant pastor and Nazi concentration camp survivor) quotation (versions vary):

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

I must confess that I started this book somewhat intimidated by the blurb. I continued to be intimidated through chapter 2. I was thrown off by the meaning and pronunciation of the clan and character names presented in the story (ex. the Regentkaa's name - Klarvkaa Etkaa Celovaa Bremanovaa). I twisted my ponytail as I clicked pages, unsure if I could easily follow the characters throughout the story.  

That was only a momentary worry. Things are started to click with chapter 3. By chapter five, I was overly engrossed and sneering, "Bring it on, Bleikovats punks. Regentkaa Etkaa and the Feldovats will never bow down."

Character-driven and fast-paced, this is an epic tale that weaves a story about fighting for survival with strings of fantasy, loyalty, and ethics. I especially liked the attention to scene detail. I could really picture them in my mind. I excitedly followed storyline events using the maps provided at the end of the book. MacKinney has a nice turn of phrase which should help Cairns of Sainctuarie stand-out in the sea of fantasy books. His writing style is descriptive and succinct. Two qualities that don't often come together in sci-fi and fantasy novels.  

All in all, Cairns of Sainctuarie is a promising start to the series. It will be a hearty treat for sci-fi and fantasy readers. It offers complex world building, a strong heroine as war leader, and lots of action.

NOTE: I received a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. I'd like to have a clak (see the animal on the cover) of my own.

AUTHOR Bio and Links

Welsh and Scottish Hawk MacKinney grew up in northwest Arkansas, and wrote for his school newspaper. Hawk served over twenty years as a Special Staff Corps Officer with the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps, a Naval Academy Blue and Gold Recruiting Officer, a Navy Recruiting Command Liaison Officer, and Commanding Officer of units attached to the U.S. Marine Corps bases at Parris Island, South Carolina and Twentynine Palms, California. Along with his postgraduate degrees, he studied English and Russian history and foreign languages. As a faculty member in major medical and veterinarian universities, he authored professional articles and taught postgraduate courses in the United States and Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem. In addition to his sci-fi series, The Cairns of Sainctuarie, Hawk MacKinney has authored the Craige Ingram Mystery Series and Moccasin Trace, a historical romance nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award. 

Website: www.hawkmackinney.net

Buy Links:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Cairns-Sainctuarie-Bleikovat-Event-Book-ebook/dp/B00A6BR6YG/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1406718551&sr=8-7&keywords=hawk+mackinney

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-cairns-of-sainctuarie-hawk-mackinney/1113367156?ean=2940015906448

Sage World Publishing: http://www.sagewordspublishing.com/fantasy.shtml

BOOK TRAILER 

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