On today’s Friday Reads edition, I’ve got my author friend Kelly Sedinger talking about his brand new book! Check it out and give it a read.

Forgotten Stars trilogy 1
Remember the stories of people landing on supposedly deserted islands in the Western Pacific Ocean in the latter half of the 20th century, only to find that the islands are not deserted but are rather inhabited by old Japanese soldiers who crashed there years or decades earlier during World War II, and all this time they’ve never known that the war ended?

Imagine the same phenomenon on the scale of not just a single soldier for several decades, but for a planetary society spanning ten thousand years. This is the basis of my space opera series The Song of Forgotten Stars, of which Amongst the Stars (out May 25, 2017) is the third installment.

The planet Xonareth was once a prospering world in the Arrilori Star Empire, but then something happened and the Emperor put Xonareth under Interdict. He forbade the Xonarethi from any contact with other worlds and installed the Guardian, a giant spaceship whose sole purpose is to keep Xonarethi ships from leaving and other ships from landing. Over the centuries the Xonarethi have kept faith, even as they have forgotten just what their transgression was to merit such a punishment.

And then one day they are set free by the arrival not of their god-like rulers from the stars, but by two wayward princesses from a far-away world — ages 16 and 10 — and their enigmatic starpilot, who are seeking safe harbor anywhere after a disaster has befallen their ship. For some of the Xonarethi, these visitors from the stars herald a rebirth of their civilization; but for others, they represent a challenge to their already challenged way of life.

As for the two princesses and their pilot, all they want is to find a way home, because they have somehow ended up on the far side of the galaxy, more than fifty thousand light years from home.

The Song of Forgotten Stars is a story that has been in my heart, in way or another, for as long as I have aspired to tell stories at all. I love large-scale space opera, but I also love stories about characters who refuse to surrender in the face of an uncertain and often dangerous world, and who find small moments of feeling amidst the larger events that surround them. My influences range from George Lucas to JRR Tolkien to Leigh Brackett to Hayao Miyazaki.

In Book One, Stardancer, we meet the two princesses and their starpilot as they land in desperation on a planet whose history suggests that the galaxy still holds many secrets about its past and future. In Book Two, The Wisdomfold Path, we learn that there are factions on Xonareth who see the arrival of the star visitors as more a portent of doom than of good fortune. And now in Book Three, Amongst the Stars, our heroines start to look toward home even as the people of Xonareth begin to learn the terrifying truths about their world and the nature of its ten thousand year exile. Through all three books they make friends and enemies, encounter love and hatred, have dreams come true and find new dreams they never knew they had, and learn a great deal about themselve and the galaxy and their place within a universe that is more enormous than any of them knows.

The story doesn’t end with Amongst the Stars, of course. How could it? There’s a lot of magic and adventure in the stars!

For more information, visit my official site, ForgottenStars.net. I am also active on Twitter and Instagram!