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The Salvation Project (The Soterion Mission series) by Stewart Ross – Blog Tour
Back on release day I shared the synopsis of The Salvation Project here.
About the Author
Stewart was born in Buckinghamshire and educated in Oxford, Berkhamsted, Exeter, Bristol, and Orlando, Florida. He taught at a variety of institutions in Sri Lanka, the Middle East, the USA, and Britain before becoming a full-time writer in 1989.
With over 300 published titles to his credit, he is now one of Britain’s most popular and versatile authors. His output includes prize-winning books for younger readers, novels, plays, three librettos, a musical, and many widely acclaimed works on history and sport. Several of his books are illustrated with his own photographs.
Stewart also lectures in France and the UK, gives talks, runs workshops, and visits schools. He is an occasional journalist and broadcaster. His brother, Charlie Ross, is the celebrated auctioneer.
In his spare time Stewart enjoys travel, restaurants, sport, theatre, photography, art and music. He lives near Canterbury with his wife Lucy, and – occasionally – his four children and two grandchildren. Each morning he commutes 10 metres to work in a large hut in the garden.
Website: http://www.stewartross.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Booksmyth
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Soterion-Mission-194311443946577/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jstewartross
What I Thought
Book 1- The Soterion Mission
This is a high concept series whose central concept had me spooked. What if there was a virus that mutated DNA. So you cure the symptoms, think everything is okay and then suddenly human kind changes – they don’t survive beyond 19 years and age rapidly in their ‘Death Month’.
When reading the first book in the series which jumps around 120 years into the future I thought it read like a cross between Lord of the Flies, Mad Max and The Walking Dead (minus zombies). Think the Saviours versus Rick’s gang.
The Soterion of the title is a legendary store of knowledge. Books of the Long Dead. Roxanne is the only literate character having been taught to read through the three books that survive in her community – Peter Pan, a short biography of Cleopatra and The IKEA catalogue 😂😂😂. She joins up with Cyrus to find the Soterion and together they battle solar electricity worshipping Gova and blood thirsty Zeds.
There are lots of new terms introduced in the book and I felt a Glossary would have been helpful. And lo and behold or appears in the back of the second and third books. The use of some modern day vernacular such as cronies and bloke sounded strange in this new world.
I enjoyed the theme of exploring how we pass down history and knowledge and guide the next generation.
The book’s point of view is from an unnamed Omniscient narrator and I did find this a bit jarring because we jumped into so many characters minds. I’m less used to this POV nowadays and it was less noticeable in the second book.
Those readers who don’t like Instalove will be less enamoured with the romance aspect of the book. But I guess if you only survive to 19 you need to get in there quick.
It was interesting to read that this was initially published as a serial and I could see remnants of this in the way scenes ended with hooks. Although at times these meant that the reader was given an indication of what was to come perhaps a little earlier than I’d have liked.
If you like your dystopias fast paced and gory then you will enjoy the action scenes in this. Personally I felt the action was stronger than the dialogue and I could really see this as a graphic novel.
Book 2 – Revenge of the Zeds
Despite the two lead females in the first book women had a much more basic role in the first book. Mainly as breeders of the species.
Therefore I enjoyed the second book much more because we are introduced to a female led gang of Zed Warriors called the Kogon. There’s also a bit of diverse representation here with their leader Xsani both a lesbian and presented with a lisp. No impediment to her rise to power. The uneasy alliance between her and a character called Sakamir was fun to read.
The Soterion has been found in this book and that allows the theme of what books are for to come through. There were two quotes in particular that I highlighted.
‘All that reading’s not good for you. It gets you thinking too much, and that’s not healthy.’
‘Did books reflect the real world, like an image in a mirror? Or was the world around him a reflection of the ideas in books.’
The other themes that get a lot more exploration is the concept of ageing and death with conflicting opinions on whether The Salvation Project to find a cure to the mutation should be enacted.
Book 3 – The Salvation Project
Our reliance on technology in the present comes to the fore in this book where key to The Salvation Project lies in a laptop. With flat batteries, and no ready source of electricity – dare they head back to face the Gova. Is growing old worth it?
Check out the other stops on the blog tour to see how the series concludes. And head over to Goodreads to enter the giveaway – closes today.
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The Salvation Project by Stewart Ross – Release Day Blitz
Happy Release Day to Stewart Ross. The Salvation Project is book 3 in The Soterion Mission series.
Synopsis
Humanity’s hope of salvation lies within a single laptop…
A mutation in human DNA means no one lives beyond nineteen. Scientists working to reverse this pandemic died before their Salvation Project was complete, leaving behind the results of their research in a sealed vault – the Soterion.
122 years have passed. The civilisation of the ‘Long Dead’ is almost forgotten, the Soterion has been burned to ashes, and communities of Constants are tormented by brutal tribes of Zeds. Cyrus, Miouda and Sammy flee their burning city with a laptop rescued from the inferno. They believe it contains the key to the Salvation Project. But its batteries are dead, there is no electricity to power it, and murderous Zeds will stop at nothing to get it back…
There’s a giveaway for the book that opens on Goodreads tomorrow . Click here to enter. If you can’t wait you can buy on Amazon here.
The blog tour for the book kicks off on Wednesday. Come back to see what I thought on 30th June.
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All the Good Things by Clare Fisher – Blog Tour Guest Post
From the editor who brought you Emma Healey’s Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller Elizabeth is Missing
Twenty-one year old Beth is in prison. The thing she did is so bad she doesn’t deserve to ever feel good again.
But her counsellor, Erika, won’t give up on her. She asks Beth to make a list of all the good things in her life. So Beth starts to write down her story, from sharing silences with Foster Dad No. 1, to flirting in the Odeon on Orange Wednesdays, to the very first time she sniffed her baby’s head.
But at the end of her story, Beth must confront the bad thing.
What is the truth hiding behind her crime? And does anyone – even a 100% bad person – deserve a chance to be good?
All the Good Things is released on June 1st by Penguin Viking.
Guest post on self acceptance for women writers by author Clare Fisher.
I Dare You to Fail
There’s a voice.
You know the one.
It goes something like this: You’re not good enough. You’re not enough. Too much. Not enough. Not good… And repeat.
No doubt plenty of men hear this voice. But I believe it’s a particular problem for women. We grow up bombarded with messages about how we should be better, kinder, cleverer, prettier, thinner, more caring, quieter, better buyers of better brands of make-up, etc, etc. Over years and decades we absorb them until we don’t hear them anymore; we mistake them for ourselves.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard my female friends introduce a meal they’ve made, a poem they’ve written, or even just an opinion, with an ‘It’s probably no good…’ or ‘I think I did it wrong’ or even just an ‘I’m sorry.’ It pisses me off when other women do it. It pisses me off when, despite knowing how annoying it is, I do it myself. Sometimes I succeed in not doing it for a time. But then I let down my guard, and there I am, back in the same old trap.
Writing is never the most practical thing to do. It is never practical at all. There is always a shirt to be ironed, a carpet to be vacuumed, a loved one to comfort, a meal to cook or an email to write. What it is is a step into the unknown. It is terrifying. What if people hate it? What if you hate it? What if your house turns into a hovel in the meantime? The voice, if you let it win, will tell you not to bother. It will tell you to focus instead on those activities that are expected of you, and which have a certifiable gain at the end of them. It will sound a lot like the truth.
If you want to write, you must answer back. Try: fuck off. Or: tell my husband to pick up the vac.
If you want to write, write. Write even if you feel it’s no good. Write even if you feel it is maybe a bit good and then you send it off to a magazine or a competition or two or three and are slapped with an endless no. Write some more. Write because you want to. Write for you. Write through your fear and out the other side. Write until you look around, you see your imperfections, you look back to that moment when you began and it’s hazy; somehow, in all this writing and trying and wailing and failing, you’ve come home. Writing means taking what for way too many women will feel like the biggest risk of all: to be something other than perfect: to say this is who I am and what I want: to fail. But as someone who, for the longest time, believed it was a) possible and b) desirable, I will tell you now: perfect is not possible. It’s dull. No good writing will come out of it. Letting yourself be imperfect is letting yourself be vulnerable. It’s not always easy, but it is more satisfying and a LOT more fun.
If that voice is still there, take it to the tip. Banish it to the cellar. Replace it with other, kinder ones; supportive family and friends, writers whose words make you tingle, writing friends with whom you can swap work. Find a writing group or a spoken word night. Try a writing course. Keep submitting to competitions and magazines. Share your writing-related insecurities: discover — shock! horror! — that others have them, too. Recognise good criticism as a chance to become a better writer not a reason to stop.
All the Good Things is about one woman’s journey from feeling like a bad thing or ‘no thing’ to seeing that she is, despite being in prison, good. That she deserves to be a human who takes up space, makes mistakes, tries and fails. This is a process we all have to go through, particularly if you want to write. It’s hard. It’s terrifying. But it’s definitely, definitely worth it.
Huge thanks to Clare for this inspiring piece.
Do check out the other posts on the Blog Tour, and come back here tomorrow to see what I thought.
kirstyes 