Arjay Books Writer's Exchange Arjay Books Category:  Science Fiction Publisher: Writer's Exchange ePublishing ISBN-10:  1920741240 Type: Fiction Pages: 297 Copyright: Jun 15 2000 (Also available in paper as ISBN 1920741690 from Booksurge.com) In a sufficiently hi-tech society numerous individuals are capable of mass destruction via nuclear or biological weapons. To survive, civilization requires a pervasive moral code limiting the use of technology, but in a fallen world this needs policing, and so do the police. James IV, most Christian High King of an Ireland with a different history than ours is deposed in 1941 by a cabal of his nobles. Exiled to thinly-populated Irish North America, he and his cousins find unlikely romance, promote traditional honour, and counter genocidal high-tech schemes. Sergeant Brian McIlhargey carries on the fight in a later generation. Can one family stand against the corrupt rulers of two worlds? What if one of its own members goes bad? The Peace has three interwoven plots. One follows the exploits of Sally and Lucy, well-educated Irish spies during WW II as they struggle with loyalties, personal spirituality, and the ethics of what they are asked to do by their control officer. When he decides they are expendible at about the same time they encounter the exiled king of another Ireland on another earth... In a second, we move forward several decades and pick up the tale of Brian McIlhargey, apparently an enlisted soldier of the defeated rebels following the infamous battle of Glenmorgan, which saw the demise of the Hibernian royal houses Devereaux and Rourke. Or, has it? The third relates the circumstances surrounding the deposition of young James IV by a cabal of his nobles, who want to rule Hibernia in their own interests. They exile the royal family from the throne for sixty years, but can't destroy the king's influence altogether. After all, who will police the police if not the king and his three cousins? Excerpt Far more disturbing was the word translated "atomic bomb" in English. If the Americans knew the closely-kept secret of the hell bomb they were readying for use on Japan was in public "print," they would have a cat. Those phrases in themselves would have been enough to keep the book confidential, even if there hadn't been people trying to take it from them. Sally's examination revealed more fascinations -- references in the Gaelic definitions and illustrative quotations to historical incidents and people she swore never existed in their Irish history. Who were the several by the name of "King Conn?" Who were the "noble families?" What was the "Covenant of the Living?" "What," she wondered, "can we make of the book saying the atomic bomb was used on Japan in the mid-eighteenth century?" What were "nanomachines," and how had they been used to kill millions of people at about the same time? Why was the English word "lawyer" translated "a pariah who practices law for money?" Didn't they have a word? Most intriguing of all, to whom was the inscription on the first page addressed?

Analog (Tom Easton)
You can find e-books at a great many places on the Net, and many aren't worth much. But Bookmice.com (original publisher - ed.) is worth a visit, judging from Richard J. Sutcliffe's The Peace.





Sutcliffe is a professor of computing science and mathematics at Trinity Western University in British Columbia. His fiction he very aptly calls "Christian Science Fiction with an Irish flavour." The setting is the "Worlds of the Timestream," a handful of parallel Earths separated by important crisis points. One such point was the Crucifixion; in our own Earth, it happened as we believe; in others, Pilate released Jesus, and the people were able to watch the Crucifixion and Resurrection as a sort of very convincing shadow play before the worlds broke all contact. Christianity developed in the latter worlds as well, but with a very different flavor, especially once Ireland came to dominate the world under the High Lord of Heaven. Technology developed centuries ahead of our own schedule, biowars impaired fertility so much that population remained low, and Irish customs of honor came to govern war and politics.




But the scoundrels are ever with us. Lucy and Sally, secret agents in pursuit of atomic secrets on one world, find themselves jumped to another and married to a pair of heroes who should be high in the councils of Tara if the King had not been deposed and his clan banned for sixty years. In the decades ahead, they and their men and others of honor will stymie attempts to spread plague and war even as they build up a web of sworn loyalties that will someday permit their grandchildren to reclaim the throne.




That day remains well in the future, however. The Peace is but the first volume in the Interregnum series, with the sequel yet to come (although you can get the first four chapters of The Friends by visiting the author's home page at http://www.arjay.bc.ca/).




The pace and prose are well up to the standard familiar in paper books, and the convolutions of politics and character are enough to satisfy any fan of epics. It's worth its price, and then some. --Tom Easton. (copied here by permission)