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Humanity: An Heir to Empire book
Europe in the 22nd century is ruled by a benevolent emperor of Bonaparte and Windsor descent. He has several sons and an extended family so succession is secured. Our young hero, 12yo Edgar, doesn't know it...but his mother is the Emperor's cousin. She fled pressures of that life with her husband, who insisted Edgar must not know.
Chancellor Hister, the elected head of government, has near-supreme power on the Earth. The Imperial constitution grants the Emperor more authority over the extra-solar colonies. That's over a billion people he has little control over. A group of scientists come to him with a new invention: Age halting nanites. Hister can't gain access to the Emperor's sons, but Edgar's 'father' has been taking Hister's money for a long time. The mother can be dealt with. He decides to kill his Emperor and the man's children and work it so Edgar is heir...an eternal heir.
After losing his mother, Edgar is sent to Europe and injected with the nanites. He must escape and find a way to get them out. Life as a 12yo isn't as glamorous as it seems. No chance of becoming an adult. Europe's constitution has a weird clause that requires a guy to reach a physical adulthood so he'll never be able to reign...at least, that's the Chancellor's plan. His reading of the law makes him think he'll be Regent.
Follow Edgar as he flees across continents and into space and back. Plasma weapons and space battles interspersed with Edgar's search for a cure. He finds allies and learns treachery. In the end, he must decide whether not aging means he's a machine...or does he retain his HUMANITY?
Chancellor Hister, the elected head of government, has near-supreme power on the Earth. The Imperial constitution grants the Emperor more authority over the extra-solar colonies. That's over a billion people he has little control over. A group of scientists come to him with a new invention: Age halting nanites. Hister can't gain access to the Emperor's sons, but Edgar's 'father' has been taking Hister's money for a long time. The mother can be dealt with. He decides to kill his Emperor and the man's children and work it so Edgar is heir...an eternal heir.
After losing his mother, Edgar is sent to Europe and injected with the nanites. He must escape and find a way to get them out. Life as a 12yo isn't as glamorous as it seems. No chance of becoming an adult. Europe's constitution has a weird clause that requires a guy to reach a physical adulthood so he'll never be able to reign...at least, that's the Chancellor's plan. His reading of the law makes him think he'll be Regent.
Follow Edgar as he flees across continents and into space and back. Plasma weapons and space battles interspersed with Edgar's search for a cure. He finds allies and learns treachery. In the end, he must decide whether not aging means he's a machine...or does he retain his HUMANITY?
271 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 19, 2016
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April 30, 2016
Note: the author and I are on a few of the same writing sites, which is how I found this book. I don't think we've ever talked, though.
Now, I am a huge fangirl of the NERDS series, which also features twelve-year-olds injected with nanobots, so of course I was interested. I had a day where I had nothing to do but read, so I finished this book all in one day. I'm not sure I would've gone past the 30% mark otherwise.
Edgar Lewis (/Sawyer/Strauss/Ulyanov) gets nanites that give him a healing factor and keep him an immortal twelve-year-old. As in, physically twelve. I'm not sure why every character who hears this automatically believes it without question, but they do. Why make a boy eternally twelve years old...?
Apparently, the Chancellor guy is a pedophile.
That's what made the first half of the book so hard to read. Adults keep telling Edgar he's going to become a sex slave. Edgar doesn't question it, at all, even though he defies and questions nearly everything else grownups tell him. All the discussion of pedophillia and torture was extremely uncomfortable to read, and that's despite knowing that Hister doesn't actually intend to do that to him.
This takes up about 50% of the book.
Seriously, if you understand the nanites, you can skip the first half and get a pretty decent scifi political thriller in the second half. That blurb talks about the Chancellor's evil plan and Edgar's struggle with his (in)humanity, but that's not really what happens here.
It's Grummer, an important man in the Empire, who drives the exciting part of the story. This is a guy who knows what he wants and works to get it. He's a decent person -- or at least he appears to be, which, in a setting where 97% of the adults are openly child abusers, has to count for something.
***
(I kept thinking, "the Chancellor's plan would have gone much more smoothly if he'd had Edgar spoiled rotten. The scientists could've lied and said the nanites were an experimental life-saving procedure after an accident. Edgar might've still realized something was up, but at least this way everyone wouldn't be under the impression that the Chancellor was a freaking pedophile.")
Now, I am a huge fangirl of the NERDS series, which also features twelve-year-olds injected with nanobots, so of course I was interested. I had a day where I had nothing to do but read, so I finished this book all in one day. I'm not sure I would've gone past the 30% mark otherwise.
Edgar Lewis (/Sawyer/Strauss/Ulyanov) gets nanites that give him a healing factor and keep him an immortal twelve-year-old. As in, physically twelve. I'm not sure why every character who hears this automatically believes it without question, but they do. Why make a boy eternally twelve years old...?
Apparently, the Chancellor guy is a pedophile.
That's what made the first half of the book so hard to read. Adults keep telling Edgar he's going to become a sex slave. Edgar doesn't question it, at all, even though he defies and questions nearly everything else grownups tell him. All the discussion of pedophillia and torture was extremely uncomfortable to read, and that's despite knowing that Hister doesn't actually intend to do that to him.
This takes up about 50% of the book.
Seriously, if you understand the nanites, you can skip the first half and get a pretty decent scifi political thriller in the second half. That blurb talks about the Chancellor's evil plan and Edgar's struggle with his (in)humanity, but that's not really what happens here.
It's Grummer, an important man in the Empire, who drives the exciting part of the story. This is a guy who knows what he wants and works to get it. He's a decent person -- or at least he appears to be, which, in a setting where 97% of the adults are openly child abusers, has to count for something.
***
(I kept thinking, "the Chancellor's plan would have gone much more smoothly if he'd had Edgar spoiled rotten. The scientists could've lied and said the nanites were an experimental life-saving procedure after an accident. Edgar might've still realized something was up, but at least this way everyone wouldn't be under the impression that the Chancellor was a freaking pedophile.")
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