Blog Tour Excerpt - Ammonite Planets by Gillian Andrews

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Ammonite Planets
by Gillian Andrews
Genre: Young Adult Sci-Fi
Date Published: July 28, 2014

Book Description:
This omnibus edition exclusive to the Kindle bookstore brings you the first three books of the award-winning Ammonite Galaxy series - a thousand pages in one volume!

"Awesome book! I'd give this 6 stars for writing if I could. I stayed up till 5 am last night because I was that enthralled." Rose - Podiobooks reviewer (about Valhai)

Meet Six and Diva for the first time in this special omnibus edition of the first three books in this series, starting with Valhai, which is a Readers Favorite award-winning book and a Parsec Awards finalist.

"It continues to astound me that this author has come up with something so completely original and interesting." Cynikat, Podiobooks reviewer.

Buy Links:

Amazon

Excerpt from Ammonite Planets

The Sellite escorted her out of the cabin. They were standing at a sort of terminus, in the middle of a lake of black liquid. It stretched out in all directions, and Diva saw that the terminus was build out into the lake, for the shore was a relatively long way away in any direction.

She was led up a “jetty” which was suspended over the black liquid by big rexelene tanks. Set into the jetty at intervals were other, smaller boardwalks each of which terminated in a metallic ring sitting right on the surface of the liquid. The Sellite went over to a control panel and pulled a switch to start some sort of life-support mechanism. Then he ushered her down the fifth boardwalk to the left, indicated the ring, and said, “Jump!”

“Jump?” She shook her head. “Into that? I don’t think so.”

For as far as she could see there was only a murky liquid, which closer up appeared to be more a type of gel. Almost solid. It would have been an ocean if only it hadn’t been so thick. And he was telling her to sink into this stuff! He had to have been lying to her about keeping them all alive. This was some sort of macabre experiment. “I … I won’t!”

“Jump!” The earlier order was repeated, the man again indicating the loop of metal which lay on the surface of the substance. “Take a deep breath and jump!”

“Will not.” Diva sat down as firmly as she could on the jetty and grabbed one of the slats it was made of with all her might. “Will. Not.”

But he plucked her up off the jetty with no very great effort and suspended her over the loop of metal.

“Take a deep breath!” And when she didn’t, couldn’t, he gave her a little shake. “Do it, I tell you. Nothing bad is going to happen to you!”

She refused, kicking out with her legs and sobbing. “I won’t let you!”

It made no difference. He simply waited, holding the kicking and squirming girl coolly until she was forced to take in a gulp of air. Then, with one slick movement he dropped her into the asphyxiating goo.

She sank through it like a stone. To try and keep her panic at bay, she began to count the time as she fell. She had been able to hold her breath for fifty seconds at home, but here … she probably wouldn’t survive more than thirty. Already her lungs felt full to bursting.

She reached thirty-two and began to scream silently inside her head. She wouldn’t last much longer. Her body was desperate for air, her heart beating a frantic tom-tom of flutters. I can’t hold my breath any more, she thought sadly. Damn! I should have done better. Dizziness entered her head and left her light with acceptance. I mustn’t breathe, mustn’t breathe, mustn’t breathe, mus—

A sudden acceleration told her that she had exited the gel. She fell freely for a second and then hit a soft, rather rubbery floor that gave with her weight and then settled gently back into place. She lay panting, taking in air in huge rasping gasps. Her heart took its time in deciding it was still alive, finally settling down into some semblance of normality. All it cared about was if the air was breathable. It must be so, because her heart was calming down slowly.

Diva stared at her surroundings. She was in a room, enveloped in the dark substance. It looked a different colour now, more translucent. It was, just as the Sellite had said, a bubble. She felt behind her with her hands, pressing into the wall. It ceded slightly, and then seemed to press back. There were several tubes visible on one side, and a smaller bubble in an alcove off the main one. She made her way over to the doorway, which she noticed was not regular. Instead it was just like the joins of linked soap bubbles, an irregular and slightly curved quadrilateral. She peered inside. There was a bed, made of the same material. What had he called it? Orthogel? And there were toilet facilities to the right. The bigger bubble must have been about ten metres in diameter, the smaller one about five.

Air, she was relieved to see, was being pumped in through one of the tubes, and out through another. But there was no way out. The ceiling that she had fallen through had closed behind her, and now presented a perfectly smooth aspect. In any case, gravity would ensure that she couldn’t get out the way she came in.

About the Author

I am English, although I live in Spain now. I've worked at all sorts of things, but have been writing too, on and off, since I was little. I have always been passionate about cosmology and astrophysics, so it was exciting to be able to bring that aspect into the series.  I recently finished a masters in astronomy and astrophysics.

Valhai is the book I always wanted to write, but I got so involved with the characters myself that I simply had to go on writing about them, which turned a one-off novel into a series. I hope readers will identify with them and enjoy them too. I myself have been practically living in The Ammonite Galaxy for the last five years. It has become so real to me that I can almost touch it!

The books out so far in the series are:

Book One: Valhai
Book Two: Kwaide
Book Three: Xiantha
Book Four: Pictoria
Book Five: The Lost Animas
Book Six: The Namura Stone (published September2014)
Book Seven:  The Trimorphs (to be published 2015)

Ammonite Planets is the omnibus edition of Books #1-3 and is exclusive to the Kindle store, and Ammonite Stars is the omnibus edition of Books #4-5, also exclusive to the Kindle store.

Author Links:

Website ¦ Valhai ¦ Kwaide ¦ Xiantha ¦ Google+

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