Daughter of Time Trilogy: Reader, Writer, Maker
About this ebook
"VISIONARY" and "ENTHRALLING"
--Richard Bunning and Norm Hamilton, authors of Another Space in Time and From Thine Own Well
*** FOREWORD REVIEWS' INDIEFAB BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS FINALIST ***
READER, WRITER, and MAKER: All three novels of the trilogy in one book. Speculative fiction with time travel, alien armageddon, metaphysical mysteries, action, adventure, cosmology, cybernetics, religion, and romance!
READER: From the future, a final plea. Out of the past, a last hope.
Ambra Dawn, a young girl born to die in freakish disregard. A doomed world, enslaved to forces unseen. A final hope beyond imagining. Become a Reader, because in the end, the most unbelievable step in the adventure - will be your own.
"Unique and altogether profound, reminiscent of Bradbury, haunting, thought-provoking and surprisingly philosophical." -San Francisco Book Reviews, READER
WRITER: From hatred, Love. From many, One.
Book 2 in the Daughter of Time trilogy: A love story and sci-fi epic about the beautiful and terrible destiny of profoundly star-crossed lovers with a galaxy's fate in their hands.
"Deeply thoughtful and exciting, warping the expectations of the genre... reminds me of Dan Simmons' Hyperion." -San Francisco Book Reviews, WRITER
MAKER: Until all is lost, nothing is found.
Conclude the epic story of Ambra Dawn in the final installment of the trilogy. A story in which the one that was lost will be found. Where a thief will guide through chaos and time. Where all that was held dear will perish. And in that final and utter destruction--there will be a Creation.
"Exploratory fiction at its most powerful and intelligent, Maker will challenge and reward all those who have ever wanted to believe in almost anything." -ForeWord Reviews, MAKER
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About the author
Erec Stebbins is a biomedical researcher who writes novels in a variety of genres, focusing on thrillers and science fiction. His work has consistently been praised for its action and thrills alongside a deeper, often philosophical angle.
His novels have been called "unique" and "pulse-pounding" (THE RAGNARÖK CONSPIRACY), "altogether profound, reminiscent of Bradbury and Dan Simmons' Hyperion" (DAUGHTER OF TIME TRILOGY), and "startlingly dark" (EXTRAORDINARY RETRIBUTION) with five star ratings in Foreword Reviews, San Francisco Book Reviews, Portland Book Review, and others.
When I began this series (then only conceived as a single novel), I wanted to write a "superheroine" book for my (then) middle school-aged daughters--the story of a "girl that saves the universe". What began as something with a strong YA flavor in the initial drafts, quickly turned darker. In addition, the ideas percolating in the first novel, READER, cried out for a follow-up. Hence, WRITER and MAKER were conceived.
With this trilogy, I was interested in exploring certain themes and ideas from a variety of science fiction authors and modern cosmology, trying to find my own "mythology" to harmonize some of the disparate conceptions of reality. Ideas of the subjectivity and limitations of human perception and understanding played important roles, as did ideas of causality, time, superstructure, divinity, and infinity.
I always wanted to write a book that not only "broke the fourth wall", but obliterated it, mocked it, transformed it, and turned it into a house of mirrors for the reader. READER was my chance to try. There has been a decidedly mixed reaction as to how well that worked, but it was a lot of fun in the making.
Whereas READER was written very organically (and metamorphosed from a YA novel to something quite different), and WRITER written following a detailed outline, MAKER was a strange synthesis of the two. A detailed flowchart of the various time loops that characterize the first half of the novel was supplanted by a completely unplanned stream-of-consciousness climax that led to a fixed narrative point: the resolution to the entire wild story of Ambra Dawn that was envisioned several years before when I completed the final draft of READER.
It was a huge "risk" to change the first person voice from Ambra Dawn in READER to her lover, Nitin Ratava, in WRITER. Indeed, both this change in perspective and the very different structure to the novel and character interactions, put a number of readers off. However, it also has been some readers' favorite novel of the three. Beyond subjectivity, there was a practical consideration of Ambra's powers and painting myself into an artistic corner with that, as well as a key element of the plot that called for a different perspective.
With MAKER, again I changed the narrator for the novel, in this case the story told through the voice of the alien Waythrel of Xix. A further challenge to myself and the reader is the ever recession of Ambra Dawn in the story. Waythrel's near constant companion in the novel is instead the enigmatic Kloan, a biological replica of Ambra Dawn, modified by the biomedicine and cybernetics of the dark Anti, who kidnapped the alien in WRITER and leads her on a harrowing and confusing cosmic quest. Ambra returns in strange and punctuated events in the novel, in multiple different forms from infant to cosmic goddess. But there are few extended engagements with the Daughter of Time as in the previous books.
By far the most esoteric of the three, MAKER cannot help but ultimately fail, just as overall the series must, as would any effort to produce an artistic impression of ultimate reality. But I didn't seek to succeed in the impossible, but rather to wade into the chaotic paradox of mind and matter and metaphysics in the context of an engaging narrative. For those who require coherence, realism, techno-science fiction, or a linear narrative, among other things, the trilogy has been at best a frustrating read. And that's okay. It was meant to be in some ways. That others have found it also inspiring and moving, thought-provoking and unique, is a success I am content to achieve.
