SURVIVAL IS ONLY THE BEGINNING...
“The Outcasts Series offers readers a chance to look through a glass, darkly,” author/illustrator Gregory Janicke said recently. “Imagine that everything you take for granted – family, food, shelter, a safe place to live and worship – disappears overnight. It’s tough enough being a teenager – in this case, life reaches the extremes. What do you do? Where do you go? How do you survive?”
Survival is only the beginning. A unique group of teenagers escape the relentless attacks of murderous Antibodies and other monsters. The teens are strangers from different cultures, but together they form the Outcasts. Led by Gyro, scouts Marina and Jax, and Lynai’seth, guardian of the children, they search for safety and shelter in a world where everything they know and love has been destroyed. Each Outcast struggles to find a place in the group, to discover new friendships and loves, and to help one another survive.
Add to the mix the mysterious Shadow Beasts – killers or saviors, revealing their true natures only in split-second acts of vengeance or mercy.
The Outcasts Series presents several levels of conflict: spiritual, cultural, moral, emotional, psychological and physical. Monsters lurk not only in the shadows but in the fears of the teenagers and children racing to HayVen, a safe shelter that may or may not exist. A terrified little girl speaks only in numbers; a boy named Kg suffers from epilepsy. The dreamer Yan hides in his fantasies; the rogue Dav’yn harbors an agenda that could destroy the Outcasts. One of the greatest enemies the Outcasts face is themselves – their inability to cooperate in life-or-death situations.
While the adventures are fast-paced and fantastic, the series addresses such relevant, down-to-earth issues as the conflict of good and evil, the nature of heroism and cowardice and the collapse of the natural environment.
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