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Saving Aran: Redemption for a Ravaged Planet
The deep forests of planet Aran and all who live within them are under threat of extinction, ravaged by the aliens from the stars.
Avatar meets Shadow and Bone in this fantastic tale of lovers torn asunder amid a planet’s growing danger.
Aran native Cort has risen to head the premier gang in the rough slums that surround the aliens’ military base on his beloved planet. But his life is shattered when a powerful slumlord abducts his dearest friend Dilia to sell to the alien commandant. When Cort’s daring rescue attempt fails, the slumlord marks him for death. Cort’s only remaining hope is to flee to the one place the man and his minions can’t follow—the wilds of Aran’s strange, forbidding forest—and become the hunter, not the hunted.
On her own in the heavily fortified base, gentle healer Dilia fends off the commandant’s advances while working on ways to escape and rejoin her love.
Deep in the forests of Aran, Cort faces his own challenge: to confront his kinship with the ancient consciousness that lies deep in Aran’s heart, and to terminate the monstrous mission of the aliens, who are rapidly plundering the forest for profit. If they complete its destruction, they will imperil every living thing on Aran.
Read Saving Aran to learn Aran’s innermost secret and see how Cort and Dilia overcome the forces that seek to destroy them and the home planet they love.
Avatar meets Shadow and Bone in this fantastic tale of lovers torn asunder amid a planet’s growing danger.
Aran native Cort has risen to head the premier gang in the rough slums that surround the aliens’ military base on his beloved planet. But his life is shattered when a powerful slumlord abducts his dearest friend Dilia to sell to the alien commandant. When Cort’s daring rescue attempt fails, the slumlord marks him for death. Cort’s only remaining hope is to flee to the one place the man and his minions can’t follow—the wilds of Aran’s strange, forbidding forest—and become the hunter, not the hunted.
On her own in the heavily fortified base, gentle healer Dilia fends off the commandant’s advances while working on ways to escape and rejoin her love.
Deep in the forests of Aran, Cort faces his own challenge: to confront his kinship with the ancient consciousness that lies deep in Aran’s heart, and to terminate the monstrous mission of the aliens, who are rapidly plundering the forest for profit. If they complete its destruction, they will imperil every living thing on Aran.
Read Saving Aran to learn Aran’s innermost secret and see how Cort and Dilia overcome the forces that seek to destroy them and the home planet they love.
- GenresScience Fiction
384 pages, Paperback
Published September 22, 2022
About the author
G.S. Kenney
7 books18 followersAuthor G. S. Kenney (Ginger) started reading early, and never stopped. In kindergarten, drawn in by an interesting book with a picture of three witches at a cauldron, she learned to read by starting with Macbeth. Now she writes speculative fiction. Her science-fiction romance novel Freeing Eden, published by Soul Mate Publishing in May, 2019, was a 2018 finalist in the Golden Heart® contest of the Romance Writers of America. The Last Lord of Eden, the second novel in the Ascent of Eden series, is also published by Soul Mate.
Interested in many fields, Ginger studied the “Great Books” at St. John’s College, architecture at Harvard, and financial planning at Boston University. She has also conducted post-doctoral research in psychology at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina, and developed software systems. In addition to writing fiction, Ginger is an avid photographer. She has traveled to six of the seven continents, and has the photographs to prove it. You can see her travelogues and photography on her website at www.gskenney.com.
After years of cold winters in Massachusetts, Ginger and her husband followed their children west in 2014, realizing their dream of moving to the milder climate of northern California. In an effort to walk 10,000 steps a day, she treks up and down the foothills of Mt. Tamalpais, and is thankful every day for her good fortune to live in such a beautiful place.
Interested in many fields, Ginger studied the “Great Books” at St. John’s College, architecture at Harvard, and financial planning at Boston University. She has also conducted post-doctoral research in psychology at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina, and developed software systems. In addition to writing fiction, Ginger is an avid photographer. She has traveled to six of the seven continents, and has the photographs to prove it. You can see her travelogues and photography on her website at www.gskenney.com.
After years of cold winters in Massachusetts, Ginger and her husband followed their children west in 2014, realizing their dream of moving to the milder climate of northern California. In an effort to walk 10,000 steps a day, she treks up and down the foothills of Mt. Tamalpais, and is thankful every day for her good fortune to live in such a beautiful place.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 19, 2022
Some have their fave emoticons but here you almost feel like you have your fave avatar. An incredible amount of world-building sets the stage for a story that will grip the reader and not let go. The story of Cort and Dilia is riveting and carries the book.
There are many aspects that make this book incredible. It is a powerful coming-of-age tale. This book is brilliantly presented as an environmental thriller. The mystic aspects are captivating and keep the story exciting. The action scenes are edge-of-the-seat exciting. There is drama, there is danger, there are tears and there is joy. This book simply has it all.
Fans of the world of people of a blue hue will love this book. Readers who feel a love for the planet will love this book. A great book that will make readers want more.
Disclaimer: I received a copy from the author in the hopes I'd review it.
My Rating: 5 stars
Reviewed by: Mr. N
This review first appeared: https://www.nnlightsbookheaven.com/po...
There are many aspects that make this book incredible. It is a powerful coming-of-age tale. This book is brilliantly presented as an environmental thriller. The mystic aspects are captivating and keep the story exciting. The action scenes are edge-of-the-seat exciting. There is drama, there is danger, there are tears and there is joy. This book simply has it all.
Fans of the world of people of a blue hue will love this book. Readers who feel a love for the planet will love this book. A great book that will make readers want more.
Disclaimer: I received a copy from the author in the hopes I'd review it.
My Rating: 5 stars
Reviewed by: Mr. N
This review first appeared: https://www.nnlightsbookheaven.com/po...
July 23, 2022
The author carries the reader into another world that feels as familiar as our own through magnificent world building and detailed descriptions. The character growth and development kept me engaged throughout the story. An enjoyable story.
August 9, 2022
Disclaimer
I received a free ARC (advanced review copy) of this book from Booksirens. This is my honest review.
I liked the cover art, blurb and premise, but I was initially a bit apprehensive about this as I didn’t have any sample text before accepting it and then starting out I found some of the initial dialogue/culture a bit jarring. A kind of strange retro-futuristic street slang/patois which didn’t quite meet up with what I was expecting, but I enjoyed the story and character development which unfolds over time as we discover more about the mysterious world Aran, it's complicated culture and relationships where things are not quite as clear-cut or obvious as they seem.
I really enjoyed the dystopian/authoritarian feel to this with the natives eking out a parasitical cargo-cult like arrangement in the shanty town serving the demigod-like humans from ‘Utopian’ Earth, it really feels like there is no fated path for the protagonists and anything could (and often does) go horribly wrong even though they’re trying their best to survive and reclaim their world from the interlopers. Sometimes they made good decisions, sometimes bad ones, or were persuaded to take an easier course that wasn’t in their best interests, or perhaps insisted on doing something boneheaded because their beliefs and backgrounds insisted on it. Nice, really well written and realised characters, I thought this was going to be fairly simple ‘cowboys and indians in space’ but it wasn’t.
I also appreciated the depth given to even minor characters who filled out their story with their own flaws, misconceptions and existed as rounded-out, well, people. Well done to m. Kenney on this score, which is not an easy line to walk, not enough detail leads to paper-thin characters and annoyance, too much leads to reader exhaustion and frustration (Hi GRRM ASOIAF). I felt any of the minor characters could have expanded into their own storyline, and even ‘antagonists’ such as Doctor Inowa and Commandant Karim had positive and believable traits to offset what they were doing. There was a real sense that the humans were almost as trapped as the city natives in their situation.
I was particularly impressed with Dilia as the other protagonist. Even though she did not get the massive power scale that Cort did, she used every ability at her disposal as well as charm, deception, wits and sometimes sheer willpower to overcome severe challenges and achieve goals. In some ways this is actually a better arc than Cort’s - he had all sorts of help and benefits, Dilia was just an average woman held prisoner in the human’s centre of power, hardly even being considered a person and being slowly poisoned to death. That makes her struggle much more dramatic.
At this point I’d forgotten the cover art and was ‘shipping the natives as being like proto-humanoid aliens, which actually made me enjoy the story more. At the point where the action really starts taking off and Cort starts to fulfil his name/title, I started having this niggling feeling I’d read this story before (in broad, not exactly) and after a few chapters it hit me: AVATAR. Yes of course, this was just like the movie, and many parts of the story worked out pretty identically. I don’t think it was intentional, but the similarities are obvious, right down to the spirit of the planet, mindlinking with the wildlife, etc. This is not a bad thing and like the movie once the setup is complete the story moves along smartly without bogging down, to a satisfying conclusion as the natives contend with nature power and force of numbers against the might of the few human’s ‘magic’ tech in a battle to control the city and through it, the whole planet.
I do feel the last act was a little too rushed and ‘neat’ with plot leads being tidied up suspiciously neatly and quickly, especially Lennard. I would like to have seen a little more of the confusion and uncertainty of the beginning continue through but at this point the outcome was all but inevitable, not through deus ex machina but decisions made much earlier. I won’t spoil it, but there’s lots of hints sprinkled through the story about how it might turn out. Nice.
I quite enjoyed this novel and would recommend it to mindful tree-huggers, earth spirits or those with an eye on how first nations peoples have been treated historically. It’s not really preachy but it gets the message across in an entertaining way, and also shows how colonialism could go, in a different world. Most telling of all, looking back on the story arc, how things could have been positive and sustainable, but instead the path of exploitation, death and destruction was chosen. As so often is by our flawed species. In this, ‘Saving Aran’ is a mirror held up to our past and indeed, present, and a cautionary tale of where we might (by allegory) end up.
I received a free ARC (advanced review copy) of this book from Booksirens. This is my honest review.
I liked the cover art, blurb and premise, but I was initially a bit apprehensive about this as I didn’t have any sample text before accepting it and then starting out I found some of the initial dialogue/culture a bit jarring. A kind of strange retro-futuristic street slang/patois which didn’t quite meet up with what I was expecting, but I enjoyed the story and character development which unfolds over time as we discover more about the mysterious world Aran, it's complicated culture and relationships where things are not quite as clear-cut or obvious as they seem.
I really enjoyed the dystopian/authoritarian feel to this with the natives eking out a parasitical cargo-cult like arrangement in the shanty town serving the demigod-like humans from ‘Utopian’ Earth, it really feels like there is no fated path for the protagonists and anything could (and often does) go horribly wrong even though they’re trying their best to survive and reclaim their world from the interlopers. Sometimes they made good decisions, sometimes bad ones, or were persuaded to take an easier course that wasn’t in their best interests, or perhaps insisted on doing something boneheaded because their beliefs and backgrounds insisted on it. Nice, really well written and realised characters, I thought this was going to be fairly simple ‘cowboys and indians in space’ but it wasn’t.
I also appreciated the depth given to even minor characters who filled out their story with their own flaws, misconceptions and existed as rounded-out, well, people. Well done to m. Kenney on this score, which is not an easy line to walk, not enough detail leads to paper-thin characters and annoyance, too much leads to reader exhaustion and frustration (Hi GRRM ASOIAF). I felt any of the minor characters could have expanded into their own storyline, and even ‘antagonists’ such as Doctor Inowa and Commandant Karim had positive and believable traits to offset what they were doing. There was a real sense that the humans were almost as trapped as the city natives in their situation.
I was particularly impressed with Dilia as the other protagonist. Even though she did not get the massive power scale that Cort did, she used every ability at her disposal as well as charm, deception, wits and sometimes sheer willpower to overcome severe challenges and achieve goals. In some ways this is actually a better arc than Cort’s - he had all sorts of help and benefits, Dilia was just an average woman held prisoner in the human’s centre of power, hardly even being considered a person and being slowly poisoned to death. That makes her struggle much more dramatic.
At this point I’d forgotten the cover art and was ‘shipping the natives as being like proto-humanoid aliens, which actually made me enjoy the story more. At the point where the action really starts taking off and Cort starts to fulfil his name/title, I started having this niggling feeling I’d read this story before (in broad, not exactly) and after a few chapters it hit me: AVATAR. Yes of course, this was just like the movie, and many parts of the story worked out pretty identically. I don’t think it was intentional, but the similarities are obvious, right down to the spirit of the planet, mindlinking with the wildlife, etc. This is not a bad thing and like the movie once the setup is complete the story moves along smartly without bogging down, to a satisfying conclusion as the natives contend with nature power and force of numbers against the might of the few human’s ‘magic’ tech in a battle to control the city and through it, the whole planet.
I do feel the last act was a little too rushed and ‘neat’ with plot leads being tidied up suspiciously neatly and quickly, especially Lennard. I would like to have seen a little more of the confusion and uncertainty of the beginning continue through but at this point the outcome was all but inevitable, not through deus ex machina but decisions made much earlier. I won’t spoil it, but there’s lots of hints sprinkled through the story about how it might turn out. Nice.
I quite enjoyed this novel and would recommend it to mindful tree-huggers, earth spirits or those with an eye on how first nations peoples have been treated historically. It’s not really preachy but it gets the message across in an entertaining way, and also shows how colonialism could go, in a different world. Most telling of all, looking back on the story arc, how things could have been positive and sustainable, but instead the path of exploitation, death and destruction was chosen. As so often is by our flawed species. In this, ‘Saving Aran’ is a mirror held up to our past and indeed, present, and a cautionary tale of where we might (by allegory) end up.
September 5, 2022
Saving Aran by G. S. Kenney is a science fiction adventure novel with a message directly directed to the environment. This book is also a tale of lovers torn asunder amid a planet’s growing danger. In my opinion, this is a refreshing way to address ecological challenges the world faces.
Having a quick look over the interesting plot, I have to highlight some important aspects of the story. Deep in the forests of Aran, Cort faces his own challenge: to confront his kinship with the ancient consciousness that lies deep in Aran’s heart, and to terminate the monstrous mission of the aliens, who are rapidly plundering the forest for profit. If they complete its destruction, they will imperil every living thing on Aran. I found this plot very intriguing, the way in which the author presents the story has caught my attention from the beginning.
I know this book will be of great interest among nature lover readers. I recommend it 100%.
Having a quick look over the interesting plot, I have to highlight some important aspects of the story. Deep in the forests of Aran, Cort faces his own challenge: to confront his kinship with the ancient consciousness that lies deep in Aran’s heart, and to terminate the monstrous mission of the aliens, who are rapidly plundering the forest for profit. If they complete its destruction, they will imperil every living thing on Aran. I found this plot very intriguing, the way in which the author presents the story has caught my attention from the beginning.
I know this book will be of great interest among nature lover readers. I recommend it 100%.
September 2, 2022
Saving Aran: Redemption for a Ravaged Planet by G.S. Kenney is a brilliant story with a greater message of ecological preservation. Cort is distraught as his planet is in peril and his love Dilia is taken and has been sold to an alien commandant. After repeated failed attempts to save his love, he retreats to forest where he connects and confront his kinship with the ancient consciousness that lies deep in Aran's heart. The story progresses as Cort's mission to save the planet from the aliens who are plundering forest for profit which will ultimately lead to Aran's every living being in danger. I enjoyed this sci-fi story as I felt closer in understanding desperation of Colt to save his planet. The story is captivating, full of adventures and overall sends a powerful message with regards to environment. I highly recommend this book for being a fantastic entertainer.
September 5, 2022
Saving Aran is the first installment in the Sons of Aran series and definitely a fitting recommendation for the readers who enjoy science fiction and romance. I specifically liked how this story focuses on the necessity of saving a planet that is in distress, but also entangles a sense of romance with the emotional involvement of Dilia. This one was a fun read and a great reading match for anyone who likes to find themselves transformed into the world of their stories while feeling like they are one with the main characters. The dialogue was inviting and witty, while also maintaining focus on the necessary action that makes the story come to life. Definitely, one I am glad to recommend.
September 4, 2022
Saving Aran: Redemption for a Ravaged Planet is the first book of a series called Sons of Aran which seems to be a promising one.
The book belongs to the science fiction romance genre and, as such, every character throughout the story is essential. Even the smallest one makes the difference and they turn the story upside down, making it a fabulous one. They let us build a world in our minds by exposing us to figures of speech that catch our attention and hold it until the very last minute.
I can not wait until the following installments to come out and see how the stories unfold.
The book belongs to the science fiction romance genre and, as such, every character throughout the story is essential. Even the smallest one makes the difference and they turn the story upside down, making it a fabulous one. They let us build a world in our minds by exposing us to figures of speech that catch our attention and hold it until the very last minute.
I can not wait until the following installments to come out and see how the stories unfold.
April 4, 2023
An interesting sci-fi story about saving the planet from earthlings who are exporting the wood from its sacred forests.
The hero, Cort, is a christ like figure who is asked to send the earthlings packing.
He has a supporting cast of animals and forest dwellers.
Took a while for this to get going and there were some slow spots, but an engaging story with a satisfying ending,
The hero, Cort, is a christ like figure who is asked to send the earthlings packing.
He has a supporting cast of animals and forest dwellers.
Took a while for this to get going and there were some slow spots, but an engaging story with a satisfying ending,
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews