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Stolen Futures: Unity #1-3
Stolen Futures: Unity, the Complete Trilogy
From New York Times bestselling author CJ Lyons, comes her first YA Science Fiction title, written under the pen name, Cat Lyons. For fans of Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles, Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, and L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz, a story about an utterly average girl transported to another time who will stop at nothing to save her family…even if it means sacrificing her own humanity.
"The Wizard of Oz meets Star Wars…Why don't we have more YA space operas like this? Cat Lyons gives us characters who leap off the page and a plot that keeps readers guessing. A story for all ages and genders, this one is sure to please." ~Hugh Howey, New York Times bestselling author of Wool
A ragged band of rebels including a girl stolen from her own timeline, a thief on the run, a dwarf mechanical genius, a boy with autism, and the former leader of the secret police infiltrate a mountain fortress on a mission to stop a ruthless leader before he can destroy all of Time.
Can an ordinary girl's love for her brother and friends triumph despite the forces of the universe aligned against them?
Contains the complete STOLEN FUTURES: UNITY trilogy including: Queen of Chaos, Thief of Time, and Pawns of Destruction.
QUEEN OF CHAOS, Stolen Futures: Unity, Volume 1:
16 year old Annie McCoy always looks out for her autistic 12 year old little brother, Nate. It’s what any ordinary big sister would do—and, unlike her extraordinary brother and parents, Annie is average with a capital normal.
Then comes the morning when Nate runs out into the street right into the path of a school bus and Annie chases after him. Time freezes for a moment as the possibilities spin out before Annie. As if she can control the future. Making her choice, she steps into the bus’s path and sacrifices herself to save Nate.
Imagine her surprise when she wakes in a world a lot like her own, but definitely not. She’s nowhere near Scotia, PA, instead she’s in a Las Vegas where the fashion is hopelessly retro and the tech is absolutely futuristic. A boy named N-8 who looks exactly like Nate tells her he summoned her here to Unity on the orders of the Delphi quantum computer that runs this world.
According to N-8, she’s here to save the world before Time itself collapses. All she needs to do is steal the Delphi Key and take control of the quantcomp.
Annie refuses to believe that anyone as average as she is could be a Chosen One. Instead, she focuses on saving N-8 and the other autistic children who have been enslaved by the leader of this strange new world: Comptroller Franco Albanese who wields the Delphi Key.
Determined to once again save her little brother—or his incarnation in this strange alternative universe—Annie must find the courage to break out of her ordinary life and embrace her new one before it’s too late.
THIEF OF TIME, Stolen Futures: Unity, Volume Two:
Despite overwhelming odds, Annie has done it! She’s stolen the Delphi Key from the most powerful man in Unity, Comptroller Franco Albanese.
But she lost the young dataminer who brought her to this strange new world. N-8 has been captured by Franco and taken to his Palace at Fort Knox.
Together with her newfound allies—the cute but cocky street thief Killian, who just happens to be Franco’s estranged son, making Annie mistrust him despite the fact that she’s desperately attracted to him, mechanical genius Kymee Revv who hides her beauty behind Kuboki makeup and sarcasm, and Revv’s father, Pierre Lafitte—Annie has retreated to the isolated desert oasis known as Mirage, a community built below the Mojave solar reservation and protected from Franco and his Chief Enforcer, Blake.
As she tries to decipher the mysteries hidden in the Key and decide her next move, Annie learns that there’s a larger conspiracy surrounding Delphi—one that goes back over a decade and involves Revv’s lost mother, her father, and Franco himself.
If Annie can’t trust the people who have saved her life, who can she trust? And if she must choose between saving N-8 and the lives of the other dataminers and saving the world, how can she decide to sacrifice the boy who is so very like her own brother back home?
How stupid must the universe be if it thinks a normal, nobody girl like Annie can save it, even if here in Unity, she’s considered extraordinary, a Meta…but the more she probes her new abilities, the more danger that Annie might lose herself and her own humanity.
Will sacrificing everything she is give her the strength she needs to save the world? Or will losing her humanity condemn it?
PAWNS OF DESTRUCTION, Stolen Futures: Unity Volume 3:
Annie has embraced her Meta-self, realizing that only by accepting who she is can she save the world and prevent more destruction and unnecessary deaths. She also reluctantly accepts the help of her new friends—Killian, Revv, Blake, and N-8—despite the fact that there is a very good chance none of them will sur...
"The Wizard of Oz meets Star Wars…Why don't we have more YA space operas like this? Cat Lyons gives us characters who leap off the page and a plot that keeps readers guessing. A story for all ages and genders, this one is sure to please." ~Hugh Howey, New York Times bestselling author of Wool
A ragged band of rebels including a girl stolen from her own timeline, a thief on the run, a dwarf mechanical genius, a boy with autism, and the former leader of the secret police infiltrate a mountain fortress on a mission to stop a ruthless leader before he can destroy all of Time.
Can an ordinary girl's love for her brother and friends triumph despite the forces of the universe aligned against them?
Contains the complete STOLEN FUTURES: UNITY trilogy including: Queen of Chaos, Thief of Time, and Pawns of Destruction.
QUEEN OF CHAOS, Stolen Futures: Unity, Volume 1:
16 year old Annie McCoy always looks out for her autistic 12 year old little brother, Nate. It’s what any ordinary big sister would do—and, unlike her extraordinary brother and parents, Annie is average with a capital normal.
Then comes the morning when Nate runs out into the street right into the path of a school bus and Annie chases after him. Time freezes for a moment as the possibilities spin out before Annie. As if she can control the future. Making her choice, she steps into the bus’s path and sacrifices herself to save Nate.
Imagine her surprise when she wakes in a world a lot like her own, but definitely not. She’s nowhere near Scotia, PA, instead she’s in a Las Vegas where the fashion is hopelessly retro and the tech is absolutely futuristic. A boy named N-8 who looks exactly like Nate tells her he summoned her here to Unity on the orders of the Delphi quantum computer that runs this world.
According to N-8, she’s here to save the world before Time itself collapses. All she needs to do is steal the Delphi Key and take control of the quantcomp.
Annie refuses to believe that anyone as average as she is could be a Chosen One. Instead, she focuses on saving N-8 and the other autistic children who have been enslaved by the leader of this strange new world: Comptroller Franco Albanese who wields the Delphi Key.
Determined to once again save her little brother—or his incarnation in this strange alternative universe—Annie must find the courage to break out of her ordinary life and embrace her new one before it’s too late.
THIEF OF TIME, Stolen Futures: Unity, Volume Two:
Despite overwhelming odds, Annie has done it! She’s stolen the Delphi Key from the most powerful man in Unity, Comptroller Franco Albanese.
But she lost the young dataminer who brought her to this strange new world. N-8 has been captured by Franco and taken to his Palace at Fort Knox.
Together with her newfound allies—the cute but cocky street thief Killian, who just happens to be Franco’s estranged son, making Annie mistrust him despite the fact that she’s desperately attracted to him, mechanical genius Kymee Revv who hides her beauty behind Kuboki makeup and sarcasm, and Revv’s father, Pierre Lafitte—Annie has retreated to the isolated desert oasis known as Mirage, a community built below the Mojave solar reservation and protected from Franco and his Chief Enforcer, Blake.
As she tries to decipher the mysteries hidden in the Key and decide her next move, Annie learns that there’s a larger conspiracy surrounding Delphi—one that goes back over a decade and involves Revv’s lost mother, her father, and Franco himself.
If Annie can’t trust the people who have saved her life, who can she trust? And if she must choose between saving N-8 and the lives of the other dataminers and saving the world, how can she decide to sacrifice the boy who is so very like her own brother back home?
How stupid must the universe be if it thinks a normal, nobody girl like Annie can save it, even if here in Unity, she’s considered extraordinary, a Meta…but the more she probes her new abilities, the more danger that Annie might lose herself and her own humanity.
Will sacrificing everything she is give her the strength she needs to save the world? Or will losing her humanity condemn it?
PAWNS OF DESTRUCTION, Stolen Futures: Unity Volume 3:
Annie has embraced her Meta-self, realizing that only by accepting who she is can she save the world and prevent more destruction and unnecessary deaths. She also reluctantly accepts the help of her new friends—Killian, Revv, Blake, and N-8—despite the fact that there is a very good chance none of them will sur...
444 pages, Hardcover
Published February 3, 2017
3 people are currently reading
328 people want to read
About the author
Cat Lyons
4 books11 followersPseudonym for author C.J. Lyons.
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 26, 2017
Stolen Futures: Unity, the Complete Trilogy was a fun read. I could really see that the author has invested a lot of time to come up with all the background stories theories and especially with the culture I met in this book. The future was kind of scary in a surreal way that only sci-fi stories can make you feel.
A girl, Annie, is for reasons I will not tell you know ;), teleported into a future time-line and finds herself in future Las Vegas. Soon she learns that she has to save the future. But what that really means and what she has to do, who she will meet and what challenges await her before she might accomplish the seemingly impossible remains yet to be seen..
The premise really intrigues me so I started reading and first, I really wasn't sure that this was really a fantasy book, but as the story kept going I enjoyed the character and the interactions with others. Annie was one of those characters who are so human, it's almost not funny anymore. Sometimes, her denial about what happened to her really annoyed me but she soon grew on me as she realized that what had happened to her was real.
I enjoyed the writing style and the culture Lyons described, the struggles the future world had gone through.. It was all intriguing and fascinating. Lyon is a great story builder.
Some characters were a little flat in my opinion. I like it when characters feel more than they think and when they remember more than they actually tell others. It's a matter of style I guess. So even though I liked the overall writing-style, I had my problems with the characters.
What also bugged me, and what is also the second reason I only gave three stars, was that concepts and people who were really important, or at least seemed to be so were kind of just dumped into the story. Whoops- there is something new the main character and I as a reader have to cope with but really, I felt like the important things were totally ignored by Annie while other things I though were extremely essential for her to know were just waltzed over like an advertisement the boy next door delivers every Thursday. That frustrated me.
But just because the book wasn't as enjoyable for me, doesn't mean you won't like it. If you don't mind a fast-moving plot, then I'm sure you'll enjoy Stolen Futures: Unity a lot ;)
A girl, Annie, is for reasons I will not tell you know ;), teleported into a future time-line and finds herself in future Las Vegas. Soon she learns that she has to save the future. But what that really means and what she has to do, who she will meet and what challenges await her before she might accomplish the seemingly impossible remains yet to be seen..
The premise really intrigues me so I started reading and first, I really wasn't sure that this was really a fantasy book, but as the story kept going I enjoyed the character and the interactions with others. Annie was one of those characters who are so human, it's almost not funny anymore. Sometimes, her denial about what happened to her really annoyed me but she soon grew on me as she realized that what had happened to her was real.
I enjoyed the writing style and the culture Lyons described, the struggles the future world had gone through.. It was all intriguing and fascinating. Lyon is a great story builder.
Some characters were a little flat in my opinion. I like it when characters feel more than they think and when they remember more than they actually tell others. It's a matter of style I guess. So even though I liked the overall writing-style, I had my problems with the characters.
What also bugged me, and what is also the second reason I only gave three stars, was that concepts and people who were really important, or at least seemed to be so were kind of just dumped into the story. Whoops- there is something new the main character and I as a reader have to cope with but really, I felt like the important things were totally ignored by Annie while other things I though were extremely essential for her to know were just waltzed over like an advertisement the boy next door delivers every Thursday. That frustrated me.
But just because the book wasn't as enjoyable for me, doesn't mean you won't like it. If you don't mind a fast-moving plot, then I'm sure you'll enjoy Stolen Futures: Unity a lot ;)
April 14, 2017
Book 1: Queen of Chaos
This is a cute little parallel dimension story. However these dimensions are not alike at except that all the same 'people' exist in them.
What drew me to this book, besides that it's Cat Lyons (aka. C.J. Lyons) is the idea that the most valuable children in this unique dimension and area, called Unity, are the autistic children. Having spent a significant amount of time with an autistic child (he was diagnosed during the time I knew him) I can't help but think that these are some awfully high functioning autistic kids. Lyons does address this in part, but as you progress in the book it seems apparent that all the autistic children we encounter are high-functioning. So my immediate question is what happens to those who can't communicate, recognize their own name, etc?
While autism is not the point, or focus of this story, it is one of the elements that stands outs as being unique. There is the typical young adult main gal whom is able to quickly adapt to her new surroundings, and while she makes comments in her head about how crazy everything is she somehow never has a mental breakdown. This is one of those things that I've just come to accept is a part and parcel of the average young adult book these days.
In fact, this is one of the primary reasons I rate this at 3 stars. It's mostly a typical and easily predictable story. While I am interested in reading the next two books, even with how short this first book was, I wasn't dying to read the next one.
This could be one of those series that you start, put aside and completely forget about without a major desire to return to it. That doesn't mean it's not enjoyable while you read it, but it's just not compelling enough to drive you forward.
Further book reviews to be added... when I get to reading them.
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review. Don't believe me? Check out the other books I've had eARCs for that I gave poor reviews to. I always give my opinion whether good or bad. (less)
This is a cute little parallel dimension story. However these dimensions are not alike at except that all the same 'people' exist in them.
What drew me to this book, besides that it's Cat Lyons (aka. C.J. Lyons) is the idea that the most valuable children in this unique dimension and area, called Unity, are the autistic children. Having spent a significant amount of time with an autistic child (he was diagnosed during the time I knew him) I can't help but think that these are some awfully high functioning autistic kids. Lyons does address this in part, but as you progress in the book it seems apparent that all the autistic children we encounter are high-functioning. So my immediate question is what happens to those who can't communicate, recognize their own name, etc?
While autism is not the point, or focus of this story, it is one of the elements that stands outs as being unique. There is the typical young adult main gal whom is able to quickly adapt to her new surroundings, and while she makes comments in her head about how crazy everything is she somehow never has a mental breakdown. This is one of those things that I've just come to accept is a part and parcel of the average young adult book these days.
In fact, this is one of the primary reasons I rate this at 3 stars. It's mostly a typical and easily predictable story. While I am interested in reading the next two books, even with how short this first book was, I wasn't dying to read the next one.
This could be one of those series that you start, put aside and completely forget about without a major desire to return to it. That doesn't mean it's not enjoyable while you read it, but it's just not compelling enough to drive you forward.
Further book reviews to be added... when I get to reading them.
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review. Don't believe me? Check out the other books I've had eARCs for that I gave poor reviews to. I always give my opinion whether good or bad. (less)
October 4, 2019
What a fantastic mind this author has. The story line was one of the best I have ever read. Even though this book was a trilogy, it left me just wanting more. The characters were perfectly blended with each other to where this book was, well, just perfect. LOVED IT!!!!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews