About the Book
Book: Crystal Witness
Author: Kathy Tyers
Genre: Christian fiction, science fiction, futuristic
Release Date: June 16, 2020
Her memories are blocked. Her freedom is gone. Her crime is a mystery.
When Ming Dalamani awakens from twenty years of suspended animation, she recalls only fragments of her former life: the life she led before she was arrested by the governing interplanetary corporation, Renasco, for a now unremembered crime.
Relocated to an alien world far from the only home she has ever known, Ming serves a powerful Renasco representative to repay her debt. But daily she lives with deadly threats from two men—the hideous mutant Zardir Huekk and the handsome, secretive musician Tieg Innig—who both want the same thing: information. Renasco-trained as a calligrapher in three dimensions, Ming begins to remember more: a clan, a mission, and interstellar piracy.
Ming must decide where her loyalties lie: with her powerful new employer, with a budding resistance movement… or elsewhere.
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MY REVIEW
Ming is foggy at best trying to remember her past. Why can’t she remember anything and what crime did she commit? For some reason she is in a new dimension and nothing seems familiar. The author has crafted a place where Ming will have to be sharp in order to stay one step ahead of two enemies.
I was intrigued by the imagination the author uses to give readers a world that has specific rules and when Ming begins to remember her past she feels a threat coming closer to her. As in most sci-fi genres there are strange beings that give me the creeps. There were times when I wasn’t sure what was going on in the story and had to reread a few pages to figure out where the author was taking the characters.
I did enjoy the suspense in the story and kept wondering what Ming would decide. What would you do if you were ordered to spy on someone? Ming must make difficult decisions that will have a ripple effect on others. I think what I enjoyed the most was when Ming began to remember things. This is where the story really drew me in. I started to become invested in the story and wanted to know who could be trusted. It’s a nice book but not one I fully understood. It is no fault of the author that I was unable to connect to the story. I am more of a visual person when it com es to sci-fi and this story at times had some very in-depth scenes but overall it didn’t keep my attention. I have read other books from this author and really enjoyed them. This story just felt a bit out of sync at times and I never was able to grasp what the author’s objective was.
I received a copy of this book from Celebrate Lit. The review is my own opinion.
About the Author
Kathy Tyers is widely published in speculative fiction, including her award-winning Firebird series and two licensed Star Wars “Legends” novels, as well as a travel book, a writing reference book, and a memoir co-written for classical guitarist Christopher Parkening. Her messiah-in-space novel
Daystar, fifth in the Firebird series, won a 2013 Carol Award, and her terraforming/genetic engineering science fiction novel
Shivering World won the 2019 Christy Award for Visionary Fiction. At home in southwest Montana with her husband William Gillin, Kathy focuses on writing, teaching music, and freelance editing.
More from Kathy
In 1988, after the initial release of Firebird and Fusion Fire by Bantam Books of New York, my then-editor asked for a stand-alone novel, and my then-agent presented me with a contract to write that book in just over half the time that I actually needed. So my third novel, Crystal Witness, appeared in 1989—and while the plot had strong bones, I wished I’d had several more months to polish it. Much to my delight, Enclave Publishing is re-issuing Crystal Witness in June 2020 with the layers of polishing added. While I was adding those layers, I found myself wondering what would happen next. Maybe … oh, yes … hmmm … Aha!
Now that Crystal Witness is ready to stand up and sing, I am delighted to be working on a multi-book sequel series, The Sunstone Saga, also to be released by Enclave Publishing. Book 1 of the saga, The Long Silence, is well underway. It introduces a new cast of characters and asks a powerful question: Where has God been, while humankind went to the stars?
Crystal Witness is the story of young Ming Dalamani, who wakens from twenty years of suspended animation to find herself “company property” on a distant world, with no memory of the crime she must have committed. She only knows that a powerful corporate monopoly rules interstellar space, and she has been assigned to serve a company representative. Immediately, powerful (and opposing) individuals offer threats and bribes, trying to enlist her to spy for both sides of a deadly intrigue. How long can Ming play both sides of the plot against her urgent wish to find out who she is … and what was her crime?
My background in music and the arts always manages to show up in my books. I made Ming a calligrapher in three dimensions, wielding a set of injection pens to create elegant designs in clear slabs. Another character is a court musician with futuristic technology at his fingertips. My entire family was musical; my mother played in 20thCentury Fox’s prestigious sound stage orchestra in the 1950s, and my father grew up in a family band that toured the U.S. every summer. When I was widowed in 2004 and needed to make a fresh start, I discovered that Regent College in Vancouver BC had a program in which I could study toward a Master’s degree in Christianity and the Arts—and write a science fiction novel as part of my thesis project. That book, Wind and Shadow, picked up the Firebird series at Book 4 and led to its completion in Daystar, Book 5. That series is conclusively finished—as you know, if you have read Daystar!
Giveaway
To celebrate her tour, Kathy is giving away the grand prize package of a still-in-box set of miniature toys that was released in 1996 to go with her novel, Star Wars: The Truce At Bakura, a signed copy of Firebird and One Mind’s Eye!!
Be sure to comment on the blog stops for nine extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.
In a small Amish town like Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, one solution to an indiscretion is to get married. Or perhaps, fake a respectable engagement . . .
USA Today
