Recommended Reading by Professionals with Jessica Strider (x2)

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

I don’t intend to do this often, but with working extra for Christmas and everyone being busy, I wasn’t able to get all the recommended reading posts that I’d hoped. So here I am, filling in a gap.

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1. I noticed K. M. Ruiz’s Mind Storm when it first came out in 2011. It’s the first book of a duology completed in Terminal Point and recently reprinted as an omnibus edition under the title Strykers. The novel’s set in a post-apocalyptic future where only ‘clean’ genes, untainted by the radiation that’s mutated humanity and given some people psychic powers, are valued. The majority of psychics are either controlled by the government or are part of the Stryker Syndicate, led by a politician the world believes is a clean gene’d human. It’s a tightly written novel with a lot of action and some great political intrigue.
2. M. J. Locke (aka Laura Mixon)’s book Up Against It blew me away. It’s set on an asteroid cluster which depends on methane ice shipments for water, air, and energy. When it’s most recent shipment is destroyed in an explosion, the colony’s resource manager scrambles to figure out what happened and find a new source of ice before their mayor sells them out to the Martian mob. There’s an AI, a transgendered character, lots of intrigue and decent amounts of action. I can’t understand how this book slipped under the radar.
3. One series I really enjoyed is Chris Evans’s Iron Elves trilogy, starting with A Darkness Forged in Fire. It’s set in a fantasy world where one nation has discovered gun powder and invaded and enslaved several others. A falling Red Star marks the return of dark magic, fostering rebellion. So the Empire sends the reinstated Iron Elves (named after a disbanded regiment that now suffers from a lack of actual Elves) led by disgraced Elf Konowa Swift Dragon, to find the pieces of the star before other interested parties do.

Stay tuned for the next post where we get more reading recommendations.