ONSET: Blood of the Innocent is out now!
A war older than the nation
An enemy with agents at every turn
An ancient foe with an offer of peace
The alliance with the Elfin Warriors has allowed the United States Government’s supernatural forces, the Omicron Branch, to hold the line against the demons and take the war to the Vampire Familias, defeating them in battle and reclaiming their resources.
Victory against the vampires, however, leaves David White with a moral dilemma as he captures an entire convoy of freshly turned vampires: beyond saving, but innocent of their species’ crimes. Duty only allows one fate for them—but then an ancient vampire arrives to negotiate for their freedom.
Letting them go drags David into the middle of a political nightmare as the Omicron branch must decide which is more important: Omicron’s authority and revenge for their dead, or the very Constitution and people they are sworn to defend…
(Launch discount will only last one week, at which point the entire series will be going up in price!)
Read it last night. I like the ethical issue, as mentioned here. My issue is, I’m having a hard time believing the massive violence could possibly be explained away, particularly in this volume. How many miles of interstate have to suddenly get repaved? And no one can backtrail the road damage and link it up to the base situation? And that’s very shortly after a near Oklahoma City level event with the casino.
And of course, this is after all the other massive firefights and blown up buildings. Excuses become like athletes denying doping allegations…stop lying to us! And with all the deaths, the furor is going to be insanely loud, and the coverage should be incredibly intense.
Like the Dresden Files, ONSET isn’t set in an exact copy of our world.
In the ONSET universe, for example, thousands of US Army troops were lost in the Montana Incursion. Officially, they died in the first Gulf War – a conflict with a far higher official body count in the ONSET universe.
It’s mentioned in ONSET3 to a certain degree, but there is a greater recognition of the continuing existence of domestic terror threats in the ONSET-verse as well. Some of that is because those threats have been active in their own right, but much of it is because they’ve been blamed for supernatural incidents.
Long story short: the furor IS loud, the coverage is intense, and Omicron has lots of practice at blaming other people for what just happened. Small incidents get covered up, larger incidents get downplayed, but the key is that the incidents don’t get blamed on the supernatural.
That said, Blood of the Innocent does represent a major escalation on the part of the supernatural powers which will have consequences in future books.
Mr. Stewart, I hope there are plans to create an audiobook edition as, these days, the only quiet time I have for reading is during my lengthy commute. You are quite a prolific writer, do you have any interest in writing for television? If so, what current series do you think you would like to write for?
Audiobook is contracted with Podium and I believe the first two books are due out this fall.
No TV writing or anything like that, I’m afraid. SF&F novels are the only thing I work on right now.
“Blood of the Innocent does represent a major escalation on the part of the supernatural powers which will have consequences in future books.” Excellent. Glad to hear you’re already thinking about more books in the series.
I was waiting rather impatiently for this book to come out, and delighted to see that the July 2017 issue date held up.
Happy writing!