THE SECOND STAR by Alma Alexander Blog Tour with Author Guest post & #giveaway @JeanBookNerd @AlmaAlexander @TTCBooksandmore ~ '

Paperback: 432 pages

Publisher: Crossroad Press (July 1, 2020)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1951510399

ISBN-13: 978-1951510398

Praise for THE SECOND STAR

“Like its cast of returned starfarers, this rich and continually surprising novel is many things at once: a religiously-inflected first contact story; an engaging psychological mystery; a glimpse of the future through the eyes of the past; and a moving tale about the difficulties of homecoming. I highly recommend it. ” —Matt Ruff, author of Set This House in order

"The Second Star is a grandly deep wallow in multiple personality disorder material. Dr. Stella Froud is wonderful as she studies six star-faring humans who come home fractured." —Jennifer Stevenson, author of Walking on Sunshine

The Parada had been lost for almost two hundred years before they recovered the ship, drifting in stygian interstellar darkness, and brought her home again.

But that was not the miracle.

The miracle was that the crew was still alive.

That was also the problem.

Six crew members went out on the Parada, Earth’s first starship. All contact was lost, and the ship vanished for almost two centuries. When the Parada’s successor found the drifting ship and somehow managed to bring it home, the six crew members were not only still alive but barely older, due to the time dilation effects of near-FTL travel. Their return was a miracle – but it could not be revealed to the waiting world. The problem was, six individuals went out to the stars. More than seventy fractured personalities came back.

Psychologist Stella Froud and Jesuit Father Philip Carter were recruited as part of the team assembled to investigate the mystery, and to try and help the Parada’s crew understand their condition and possibly reverse it. What they discovered was a deepening mystery, and very soon they found themselves forced to take sides in a conflict that nobody could have possibly predicted. Their world would never be the same again.

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Guest post with Author Alma Alexander

Meet the Characters

There are A LOT of characters in “The Second Star” (including the fractured personalities… it’s a cast of literally hundreds…) but let me just give you a handful of them, at least partly in the scenario of a “movie” of this book, with no restrictions in choosing actors who I’d like to see in the part.

Martin Peck – Think Adam Driver. He’s by-the-book, he respects chain of command, but he also respects courage – and Stella Froud is everything that drives him around the bend. There’s something human inside of him but it’s long since been subsumed by the military persona and he takes his responsibilities SERIOUSLY. I am sorry he had to be left holding the can for the events of the book, and I suspect his military career is pretty much over at this point, but he could not have done anything differently. He is what he is, and he doesn’t know, and doesn’t want to know, how to be anything else. He is strength – sometimes wrongheaded strength, but he stands when he needs to and when told to hold the line, he holds it.

Favorite quote:

“Only five people left. The sixth was thoroughly examined in a post mortem in these hours past, and is on his way to being quietly cremated as we speak.”

A lump rose in Stella’s throat. “What are you going to do with him?”

“We’ll take him back to the stars,” Martin said, and broke. The iciness cracked and what was underneath boiled over. He turned to face her at last. “Do you think we are quite heartless? We know these people are a miracle. But you yourself have now had a decent chance to interact with them. Honestly, Stella. Honestly. Without any hedging, tell me, right now, what your recommendation is. Are they ready to be rehabilitated in any way? Returned to the world which they left two centuries ago and would find it tough to adapt to even if they weren’t otherwise incapacitated?”

Father Philip Carter – Think David Tennant. Wiry, intense, passionate, loyal, honest, compassionate. In some ways, the absolutely ideal priest – but vows of obedience seem to have… slipped a little… in a battle with conscience. He is steady and supportive and even though he is career “church”, with his family providing sons for the priesthood over generations and good connections within the ecclesiastical hierarchy, he is also his own man, and is capable of responding to situations with a sense of whatever decisions he makes being between him and God and not God’s minions here on Earth. Faced with impossible things, he struggles, and then he chooses, and he lives with his choices. There is something a little tragic about him – but also deeply noble.

Favorite quote:

“Stella. I hesitate when I am speaking to someone of your profession to say that I ‘hear voices’ because you will probably have your own ideas about that – but if I have ever heard God speak to me, it was now, when I prayed about what happened back there, with the crew. If it should happen that the answer to one’s prayers is taking matters into one’s own hands, I will do that, and make what amends I need to, after. I know you don’t believe any of this, and it doesn’t matter. I have been asking God to keep you safe – I didn’t think that He would toss you out into the world alone.”

Lily Mae Washington – Think Lupita N’yongo. Highly educated, high-strung, loyal, with a mad streak of courage, and, where it matters most, the capability of selflessness. There would be good reasons why someone would be chosen for the crew of Earth’s first starship and she embodies those reasons. I see large expressive eyes and a sensitive mouth, her hair cropped close to her skull putting her fine features into sharp focus. She is at once nothing and everything one would expect in a Black Madonna.

Favorite Quote:

Something flickered in Lily Mae’s eyes – something that shuttered swiftly and then opened again, like a nictitating membrane moving too fast to properly observe, and Stella’s hackles rose. The slow smile that began to curl Lily Mae’s lips didn’t help the sudden feeling of uneasy alarm that beat at Stella’s instincts. But the whole thing lasted just a handful of seconds, gone almost before Stella had a chance to properly quantify having registered it at all. Then Lily Mae turned away again, curling back up on her bed. The expression on her face had hardened into something stiff, almost mask-like, and she had folded her arms across her chest, forearms crossed and braced in what almost looked like a fighting pose. The voice that delivered the response to Stella’s question was flat, inflectionless, but the name it delivered was not the one Stella might have recognized.

“Alabastra does not wish to talk any more,” Lily Mae said.

Stella Froud – My lead protagonist, as it were – and I honestly don’t know who I’d see playing her. Someone absolutely new. Someone unique. Because she is. She’s not The Chosen One, not by a long shot, but once she IS chosen, she will put all that she is into the endeavor she is chosen for. In the book, she is the one who stands between the crew of the returned starship and a world which fears them and might find it easier all around if they were simply to disappear. But now Stella knows about them. And Stella is a Force of Nature. What she stands for, she stands for strongly – she will speak truth to whatever power is in her way, she will find the means to do what needs to be done and she will take the responsibility for it. She cares deeply and has the ability to be deeply wounded by that – but she gives everything she’s got anyway because that’s how she is. She is capable of seeing minutiae, and she is capable of putting the details into a big picture. At the beginning of the story, she is also something of an innocent. That… changes.

Favorite quote:

I know you must be angry at me. But I could not stay. And I could not leave on any terms that you needed to dictate. One very easy way of solving the thorny problem that Lily Mae left for you by escaping was simply to give orders to shoot on sight. I knew… things about her… that I cannot possibly tell you. All that I CAN tell you is that it would have been terrible and terrifying if that scenario I posit above had been allowed to come to pass. I might have considered bringing her back, if I had found her and ensured her safety – but then you quartered those two guards on me and Rob when we left to look for her and – well – things got complicated... there was a moment – we could have possibly had something, you and I. We could have. But we met in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in all the wrong circumstances…

And a bonus character – my alien – the Illogon, known later in the story as Jerusha. In this instance, speaking through the agency of Lily Mae – and obviously no “casting” data for obvious reasons but this is (without any doubt) an important character in this story. Intrinsically powerful and vulnerable at the same time, this is a creature that draws all kinds of responses – and it is self-aware enough to realize that it has caused a lot of trouble… hence the quote I put forward for it:

Favorite quote:

“I was lost,” she said, and the oddly inflectionless voice that had been hers before dipped into an emotion – a difficult one to pinpoint, but there was sorrow there, and suffering, and fear. “I was the explorer. I was in the ship. I was in the stars. And then there was an ending – a break – a rupture – I was severed – there was no home, no sanctuary – but there was… there was… there were places to seek safety… but I did not understand, not then… I caused suffering. I caused harm. I cannot undo this. I am sorry.”

Photo Content from Alma Alexander

Alma Alexander is an author whose books include the internationally acclaimed historical fantasy The Secrets of Jin-shei published in 13 language, and its follow-up, Embers of Heaven, set in a fantasy China.

VOYA suggested that her Worldweavers series (Gift of the Unmage, Spellspam, Cybermage, Dawn of Magic) might be just the thing "for readers suffering Harry Potter withdrawal."

Another series, The Were Chronicles (Random, Wolf, Shifter), which dramatically changes the Were world, is about to be republished,

Other fantasies include her haunting and newly republished Midnight at Spanish Gardens, as well as Changer of Days, Wings of Fire, Empress, and a humorous science fiction novel, AbductiCon. She has edited two anthologies, River and Children of a Different Sky.

More on all her books - and links for buying them - can be found under the pull-down menu BOOKS at the top of the page.

Alma Alexander was born on the banks of the Danube in a country that no longer exists, grew up in Africa, and is married to an American she met online. She lives with him and two cats in the cedar woods of the U,S. Pacific Northwest.

WEBSITE: http://www.almaalexander.org/

TWITTER: @AlmaAlexander
GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/36343.Alma_Alexander
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