Welcome to the -Week Virtual Book Tour Schedule for The Pheeworker’s Oath by Adam Gaylord - SciFi, Speculative Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery
About The Pheeworker’s Oath:
Humans don’t belong on this world. The refugees who crash-landed on the Atipok homeworld can’t see or touch phee, the elemental power which flows through rock and stone like living rivers of light. From the moment of his hatching, healer Takey has manipulated phee to heal, bending strands to his will to mend muscle and bone for both human and Atipok alike.
But when the Atipok queen is murdered and her death blamed on an orphaned human child capable of pheework, the first of her kind, a rift is torn between the two races that could spell the end of humanity. Anti-human factions seize power and the Atipok army is on the march. Can Takey survive long enough to unravel the strands of conspiracy, protect the child, and broker a peace to avoid genocide without betraying his own people or himself?
Chatraka, the huge apex predators
of the southern grasslands, rarely strayed this far north. In their native
range, attacks were rare, and only upon lone travelers, but this was the third
attack on a human settlement in as many lunars. Something had changed.
Of course, since the humans had
crashed into our planet, much had changed.
I exhaled, my anger dissipating,
and moved on to the younger female. She lay on her side, apparently unharmed,
shielded from violence by her familial cocoon. I rested my hand on her shoulder
and harnessed another tendril of phee, willing it into the center of her limp
form.
The phee tendril blunted and bent
like a piece of straw thrust against the side of a wagon.
I flinched.
“What’s wrong?” Hassan asked.
“Just a moment.” Again, I tried
to coax power into the girl, this time more subtly, much as I would for one of
my own kind. Medical pheework is invasive by its very nature. Insinuating phee
into another without permission is an attack and a grievous crime amongst
Atipok, second only to forcibly coercing a pheeworker’s ability. As a healer,
I’m allowed such intimate contact, but only with great care. Over the solars,
I’d grown used to rougher treatment with my human patients given that they
couldn’t sense phee one way or the other.
On an Atipok, one of the easiest
entry points is the tip of the tail. I figured the vestigial human tailbone
might be an equivalent. I closed my eyes and traveled with the strand,
attempting to gently needle it into the base of the girl’s spine. Just as before,
the strand deflected, not upon her skin, but upon a thin layer of elemental
power that lay just on top, like a coating of liquid armor.
My scales rippled in surprise. My
eyes swept the forest surrounding the clearing, the light blue needles of the
pines swaying in the light breeze, but found no sign of outside manipulation.
My mind raced as I tried to come up with some kind of explanation, but I
quickly conceded there was but one.
I leaned back. “Fascinating,” I
murmured, as much to myself as Hassan.
“What? What’s wrong?” Concern
creased Hassan’s broad face. Like all his kind he was rather ugly, but in a
kindly sort of way. He had brown skin, although much lighter than the girl’s,
with short cropped black fur circling his face.
“Who is this girl?” I asked.
“I think her name is Molly. Her
parents are—were—Sam and Monica.”
“How old is she?”
“I don’t know, twelve or
thirteen. Why?”
I glanced at the other humans
standing around us, watching the scene. Several eyed me with suspicion, a
common reaction to pheework among humans. A couple looked downright hostile.
Hassan caught on and dismissed them to look for salvageable provisions. Then he
turned back to me. “Okay, what’s going on?”
“This girl is the first known
human pheeworker.”
“What? Are you su—” He hesitated.
“I mean, how is that possible?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, is she okay?”
“She’s encased in phee.”
Genres:
https://saphsbookpromotions.blogspot.com/2024/03/book-tour-schedule-for-pheeworkers-oath.html
From Aimee Ogden, Nebula Finalist:
A compellingly alien protagonist, who also has the deeply-held and familiar belief that a better world is possible.
In THE PHEEWORKER'S OATH, neither compassion nor cruelty are traits limited to humankind. There are no easy answers to the complexities of human refugees building a new home for themselves on a different world--but it is easy to care about the compellingly alien Takey, and about his deeply-held and familiar belief that a better world is possible.
From Rachael Jones, WFA Finalist &
Tiptree Award honoree:
The Pheeworker's Oath is a timely science
fiction tale about a stranded human colony dependent upon the Atipok, aliens
with near-mystical abilities that allow them to control their environment and
their very bodies. It is a fascinating examination of how manipulative leaders
harness fear of the other to gain power, and how the only way to break that
power is to find kinship with the very beings you've been told to fear. This
adventure story showcases timeless themes and intriguing worldbuilding. Come for
the cool alien powers, stay for the lizardlike Atipok--but don't you dare call
them Lizards!
MIRROR WORLD PUBLISHING:
Paperback:
Ebook:
AMAZON:
Adam Gaylord (he/him) lives in Colorado with a
wife that is smarter than him, their two monster children, and a very handsome
dog. When not at work as an ecologist, he’s usually writing, baking, drawing
comics, or some combination thereof. Look him up on GoodReads or find him on
Twitter/BlueSky @AuthorGaylord.
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