Men of Stone

The Faded Earth #3

by Joshua Guess

The fight is never over, and the board is always changing.

In the isolated prison colony known as the Block, the exiled leader of the Protectorate enacts plans a decade in the making. Across the Protectorate itself, revelations about social engineering and the mass murder of citizens disguised as disease outbreaks have given rise to new political factions. Unrest is building toward a breaking point across their previously uniform and complacent society.

Deathwatch agent Rebecca Park and her team have no choice but to ride the leading edge of the brewing revolution. Tasked with damping the heat of growing chaos and putting out fires when those efforts fail, Beck is pushed to the limits of her creativity and ingenuity--and beyond.

Faced with an enemy bent on seizing back power and a population of citizens torn between rediscovered freedoms and the traditions that have kept them alive, only the thin black line of the Deathwatch can keep these forces from tearing everything apart.

212 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 9, 2018

About the author

Joshua Guess (who goes by Josh most of the time, but Joshua professionally because his mom insists) is originally from southern Illinois, but moved to central Kentucky at an early age.
Always a storyteller, his interest in creating began with art. He loved to draw and come up with stories about his pictures.
Then he discovered comic books and novels, and things...took a turn.
Devouring everything from superboy to Stephen King, Josh started to gain a greater interest in writing, making it a hobby during high school and achieving distinguished marks in his portfolio.
Then, life got in the way. College and the struggle to start a life of his own away from home took up most of his time. His love of telling stories took a back seat to the needs of daily life for many years, with the occasional foray into working on one project or another.
In late 2009, Josh buckled down and started work on an idea for a fantasy novel that had been stuck in his head since those halcyon days back in high school. Struggling to find a voice, Josh realized months later after many false starts that he needed to stretch his brain a little, strengthen his writing muscles. So he began another project that had been simmering in the back of his mind, a continuing serialized zombie story, told in the form of a daily blog.
Living With the Dead has given him a measure of success, but more important has imparted new skills at wordsmithing and the drive to complete. 'Bound to Silence', his debut novel, has been released and is available now, as are many collections and versions of Living With the Dead.
Once that tipping point was reached, there was no choice for him but to keep on writing. Much more of Josh's work will be released in the coming months.

I hate writing in the third person about myself. I live an average life and work a full time job. I have three cats, two dogs, two ferrets, and a wife that I'm so in love with it hurts. My goal is to some day have enough success to write full time, and to manage a level of long term financial security that I don't have to worry about money. It's my dream to make a good living doing what I love--telling stories. I hope you enjoy my work. That's why I do it.

Reviews

[Walter Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This isn’t the first time in one week that I have started a series with Book #3. It is a credit to Joshua Guess that his narrative makes reading it seem as if it was a stand-alone story, at least until the 2/3 point, where a sense that previous stories had led up to this, became evident.
It is also a credit to Joshua Guess that I immediately purchased the first two novels in the series and look forward to reading them in spite of already “knowing” how the story ends up.
This is an original post-apocalypse story employing intriguing elements of how culture and society have evolved to deal with Earth having been ravaged by nuclear weapons, and also a disease that has transformed most of the surviving population into a state of mutated physical and intellectual “sub-humans” (and for a change, these lethal creatures are not zombies). Not for a moment did I pause to wonder if I had not already read this kind of story many times before.
There are lots of action scenes. There are moral questions of how much “control” is needed to maintain a functioning society. Sub groups of humans, with cultural philosophies that seem completely incompatible, are thought provoking. And Joshua Guess has thoroughly thought all of this through, and it all hangs together with a logic that makes complete sense.
Characters are well done, and there are many strong female protagonists. The best of human nature struggles, but eventually, it finds the strength to push back the darkness.

[Joan Barstad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third, and I think, last, book in thr Faded Earth series.

I really liked the other two books. But, I struggled with this one. For some reason, I had a hard time following the story. And had to reread a lot of things.

I haven't had this happen with any other Joshua Guess books, so maybe it was just because we were going through a heatwave, and my concentration was off.

It isn't going to stop me from reading the rest of his books!

[Mary Paap · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome reading.

Awesome reading, found it was like watching a movie in my mind as I read. Each character had their own individual looks,and characteristics that I grew to know and love, thank you for sharing your wonderful thoughts, and feelings each person had in relationship with the people around that made up the whole story come to life.😍