Spotlight: Jadeite's Journey by Lucinda Stein
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Genre: YA Scifi
Release date: January 2017
Inkspell Publishing
About the Book
When romance turns deadly…
Jadeite’s perfect world comes crashing down on her. In the futuristic world of United Society, her only problem has been how to act around the cute boy on the air shuttle. But Jadeite’s world changes when she comes across a man who looks alarmingly like her father. Clones were declared illegal years ago. When she sees her father, a robotic engineer, headed to the Dark Edge of United Society, she follows him and uncovers her father’s secret life.
Jadeite shadows her father past the boundary of United Society and into a primitive world of canyons and high deserts. She learns her father is a Ridge Runner passing between the two worlds. Even more alarming, she discovers her younger brother, Malachite, is sick and requires medicine only available from over the Ridge. After her father is arrested, Jadeite takes his place in order to save her brother’s life.
But her world turns even more precarious after she breaks up with her obsessive boyfriend, Mattie. Jadeite soon learns his threats are more than words, and she finds her life is in jeopardy.
Excerpt
Jadeite glanced around at the people huddled together in small clusters. That’s when she realized the spot where they’d slept was empty. Malachite had vanished.
She scanned the room, but he was nowhere in sight. He was not in the alcove to her right. What if he’d gone outside? Her stomach twisted. She wouldn’t put anything past Malachite. She hurried to the main entrance, where a small group of men remained. She was about to turn back when one man stepped aside. Malachite slipped through the middle of the hunters, his curiosity drawing him on.
Halfway to the mouth of the cave, she grabbed his arm and jerked him backward. She cupped his mouth because their safety depended on not being detected. About to whisper in his ear, she saw the man closest to the entrance wave everyone back. Jadeite drew her brother against the wall.
Dark figures passed the cave. It took a moment to realize what she was seeing, what she’d only read about in government classes: the Legionnaires, the warrior division of androids. She’d never actually seen a picture of them. She clapped both hands over Malachite’s mouth, his eyes wide as Ruby’s pancakes.
Marching single file, armored droids explored the bottom of the cliff. The head of one warrior pivoted, its elongated nose blending with its mouth in a long reptilian snout, its red heat-seeking eyes ablaze before it faced forward again.
Jadeite held her breath. Finally, the small exploration group had passed. “Are you trying to get us killed?” she whispered to her brother. A hunter grasped her arm and pointed outside.
A warrior droid swept past the cave. Another followed. It paused and a black telescopic arm extended near the mouth of the cave. Zap. A streak of electricity found its mark, and a high-pitched squeal sounded.
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About the Author
A school librarian for over twenty years, Stein now writes fulltime. Sanctuary: Family, Friends, & Strangers was a 2015 Colorado Book Award finalist. Three Threads Woven, was a 2010 WILLA Finalist. Her story, Sulfur Springs, won First Place in the 2011 LAURA Short Fiction competition. Her stories have appeared in Pooled Ink, The South Dakota Review, Fine Lines, and Women Writing the West online.
When not writing, she hikes desert canyons and alpine trails. She loves anything vintage, her shelter-rescued dog, Opie, and, most of all, her husband, Rob.
