Subgenre: YA science fiction
About Retrograde Horizon:
In volume one, Sonny made his way home. Now he’s in volume two, and
those pesky clones are still trying to kill him – or worse.
Meanwhile, his family is still trapped in a comfortable suburban
development on the clones’ super secret mist-shrouded volcanic
island somewhere in the South Pacific. It’s starting to look like
he’s going to have to go get them, if he can get past the
assassination attempts, and avoid getting distracted by true love.
A fast-paced epic science fiction adventure set in 3748 on an earth
with a very different climate, not to mention configuration,
chemistry and composition. For Young Adults and Old Children.
TRIGGER WARNING: contains potentially upsetting material about
explosions, terrorists attacking schools, malfunctioning robots,
school bullies, mean principals that assign a bunch of extra
homework, paparazzi, poverty, affluenza, bad neighborhoods, public
transit, precipitous drops in socioeconomic status, police drones,
police, clandestine lizard fights, exploding roller coasters,
unicorn attack, industrial steam calender malfunction, pissed-off
chef with a deep fryer … I’d better stop, I’m starting to get
into spoilers and I’m barely into the second chapter.
This is the sequel to One Sunny Night.
This is the sequel to One Sunny Night.
Excerpt:
Once he realized he was lost, he started jiggling doors, hoping to
find one that led to people who could direct him toward the exit.
He jiggled at least twenty doors before finding one that opened. It
led into a dark little corridor with another door at the end,
bright sunlight shining through the slender gap beneath it. This
door was loose too, and beyond it were some stairs. When Sonny
stepped onto the stairs the door behind him clicked shut. He
jiggled it and slapped at the palm plate beside it, but nothing
happened. Nowhere to go but up.
He climbed up the stairs and found another door. He opened it and
emerged from a clump of fake rocks, with a waterfall tumbling down
the other side. He recognized from his wallscreen viewing that he
was in an enclosure but he didn’t see any animals.
No fences were visible. He could see plenty of leafy trees in all
directions. He could also see large patches of blue sky for the
first time since he’d moved to Virginialina. He had almost gotten
used to thinking of sky as something that came in shades of drizzly
gray.
He had grown up south of the equator, watching the sun travel
through the north of the sky. Now he was north of the equator and
the sun, and when he stood facing the sun, the west was toward his
right hand, rather than his left. He could see a wall to his left,
which meant it was east. Maybe a hundred meters away.
As he headed toward it, he ran into an invisible fence. It started
out as a low, buzzing sound that made him very anxious for some
reason he didn’t quite understand. It got louder with every step
forward. There was a taste that came along with it, or possibly an
odor, indescribably bitter, like fermented broccoli.
Sonny headed forward, despite a very strong urge to turn back. The
sound and the bitterness reached a crescendo and then started to
decrease, melting away as he sped up and sprinted. He was through
the sonic fence. Facing the visible wall, several meters ahead of
him. He was headed towards it when he heard something that sounded
like a horse.
He turned around, moving slowly and fluidly so as not to spook any
horses that might be nearby, and he saw one. A tall palomino that
hadn’t been brushed recently. He slowly extended his hand in a
friendly gesture. “Hey there.”
The horse snorted and stepped out of the shade of a grove of trees,
onto the path. It was gigantic, far taller than Raspberry, the
horse that had taught Sonny to ride. It took another step forward
and unleashed a torrent of pee. Sonny noticed it had a unicorn horn
protruding from its head. Somebody’s pet mutant, turned over to the
shelter after it became unmanageable. Sonny began slowly moving
backwards, hoping he’d be forgotten by the time the unicorn
finished peeing, but he had no such luck. It stamped its foot,
lowered its head and let out an equine roar. Then it charged him.
Amazon
About Charon Dunn:
Charon Dunn is originally from Hawai’i and lately from San
Francisco. In addition to multiple failed career paths in
journalism, music, fortune telling, performance art, audio
engineering and actually graduating from college, she has decades
of experience assisting trial lawyers by supporting the desks,
processing the words and performing many other litigation-related
skills, most of which she can’t talk about at all. She has a pretty
good handle on the concept of what all can go wrong.
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