THE SHADOW JUBILEE

A brother and sister reunite after years apart to fight an enemy who threatens to destroy their home world in Millet’s SF/fantasy novel.

A young woman named Nivienne, aka Kite, is a returning exile to the backwater, low-tech planet of New Bretagne. Kite hopes to reunite with her younger brother, Merlin, and confront her mother, Miranda, for an explanation as to why she was so callously sent away as a child. But her mother is dead, and answers Kite hoped to find—about the neurodivergence that enables her thoughts to see across space but which rejects all neural implants that would allow her to live a full life outside New Bretagne—may well remain a mystery. Merlin is one of the Faithful, the cult that worships Le Voile, the alien Mind trapped inside a nebula near their home planet. Just like his older sister, Merlin has an uncanny ability (he can see across time), and after having a terrifying vision of an apocalyptic future, he concocts a daring plan to thwart the Faithful’s mission to unleash their god upon the world. But when Kite unexpectedly returns and becomes a target for Le Voile and its minions, all hell breaks loose. In the author’s rich, engaging blend of SF and fantasy, Merlin and Kite come into vivid focus as they share the narrative with alternating first-person points of view along their parallel journeys toward self-empowerment as they face impossible odds. Kite’s voice especially shines through: “I sob and he holds me and I wish I wish I had a power like Merlin’s, so I could hold my younger self the way Mr. Ellis is holding me now. I wish I could comfort the child-me all those years ago as she left on her one-way journey to the dark.” The story is self-contained with the potential for more to follow.

A fun, entertaining, heartfelt adventure among the stars.