In a toxic future flooded by dead oceans and poisonous gases, twins Keeto and Elize become the target of an otherworldly predator in their quest to save Elize from their mother’s fate.
The mystery surrounding their mother does more than evoke painful memories. It has been plaguing Elize’s nightmares for 9 years as she shows increasing evidence of the psychological sickness for which their mother was confined, and apparently died from.
Keeto, an armchair archeologist and risk-averse bookworm, fears that their oppressive and deceitful father will find out, and have the daring quick-witted Elize committed, as well. With the help of an underground merchant community, the twins, now 18, escape from their secluded highland village to Eadonberg, the infamously stunning floating coastal city protected inside an invisible biowall.
Elize befriends Zafarian, a dweeby classmate with expertise in gadgetry and law-breaking, and with the most unusual hair. Keeto does not approve. A shadow of distrust follows the boys as the trio become increasingly entangled in a conspiracy and a mysterious stranger taunting them with clues.
However, what lurks below the waters parallels the darkness the twins discover as they settle into their new identities: Elize, a medical student at Schrödinger University, and Keeto, an apprentice curator at the Museum of Antiquities.
As tough-girl Elize’s stability deteriorates, she comes to terms with her fragility. With so many people, looking for the twins, some knowing their importance, others guessing at it, still others fooled by layers of deception, and the twins having no awareness of any of it, loyalties get tested.
Not even the Unification, can protect them. In fact, its own secret drive to locate the twins summons still others to the hunt — others whose true intentions remain hidden.
Will Keeto and Elize find the answers in time? Or will the questioning lead them down a dangerous path where treachery, lies, and deceit reside?
Enter the Nemecene™ World, where the real answers are waiting for you to discover them...before they discover you.
Be prepared.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the very first novel in a 10-novel series recounting a 9-year time period in the Nemecene epoch. It sets up the world, clues, and background for the twins' journey. Be prepared to put your thinking cap on. Muahahaha. ;-)
Nemecene: The Epoch of Redress (Episode 1 in the Nemecene series)
Government types and a mysterious figure pursue a girl and her twin brother in this debut sci-fi novel and series opener.
Elize and Keeto Simone live in a world of ravaged oceans and deadly gases. And there’s deceit as well, as least from their father, who they suspect has kept things from them, namely details on their mother’s predicament. Years ago, the Global Health Unit took her away, placing her in a hospital’s psychiatric wing. Now Elize is experiencing symptoms of possible mental deterioration (for example, hearing voices). Believing she’ll be hospitalized, too, the twins leave their father behind for Schrödinger University; Elize earned acceptance into the bioengineering program. Determined to maintain a low profile and decipher their father’s flashes (memory recordings), the siblings meet new people but struggle with trust, from Caroline to technological genius Stitch. The enigmatic Nathruyu, meanwhile, trails the twins to the university, certain that her destiny’s somehow tied to theirs. But she’s not the only one hunting them; the Unification’s also after them, and Elize and Keeto want answers, starting with their own origin. Lefave splits her striking tale into three distinct, mostly linear perspectives: Nathruyu’s vague narrative; Elize’s animated, first-person account; and Keeto’s journal entries for their mother. Nathruyu’s story is often bewildering, as her link to the twins remains deliberately obscure. But even abstract moments spawn visual prose: “The atmosphere grows thick with regret, strangling her lungs, as her brain spins inside her skull.” Readers should peruse a glossary addendum first since most slang, though clever and derived from various sources and countries, is sans context. Lefave enhances the plot with murders on campus (some a mystery, others unfolding from a killer’s viewpoint). Much, however, is left unresolved; one character’s promise of answers is an ending riddle that reveals nothing.
A smart, ambitious dystopian tale that teases the protagonists’ epic genesis but saves most of the details for later volumes.
