Goddess Fish Promotions Presents

The Third Earth
by Wesley Britton

A randomly drawn winner will receive a signed paperback book and swag for The Blind Alien (US Only) – Enter Below

Wesley Britton has an imagination that has created worlds and situations I haven’t seen anyone create before. New ideas, worlds, characters – it’s great!

For twenty years, Dr. Malcolm Renbourn and Tribe Renbourn faced adventure after adventure, struggle after struggle on Beta-Earth.

Now, Renbourn and five of his Betan wives are forced to cross the multi-verse once again, this time to the strange world called Cerapin-Earth. After startling and frightening physical transformations, the altered Renbourns meet two new kinds of humanity. One is the dominant pairs who are able to share thoughts and sensations at the same time. The other are the nams, single-bodied people the pairs deem defective mono-minds. As a result, nams are exiled from the overpopulated cities of pyramid hives.

Tribe Renbourn must join the outcasts and teach them they are as worthy of love and acceptance as any unkind pair. But helping the nams learn how to stand up for themselves ultimately leads to a catastrophic war. At the same time, Cerapin scientists plan another multi-versal jump that must also end in a costly disaster. Along the way, two sexy spies complicate everything.

On a world where technology is worshiped like a religion, how can the nam rebels overcome the superior armaments of the pairs using primitive weaponry? While this conflict brews, Tribe Renbourn explores what it means to be human in ways they never expected. Will their epic end like it began, forced to sacrifice themselves to save a doomed city?

5 out of 5

Although this is a sci-fi adventure, the writing style is more reminiscent of literary fiction. I greatly enjoyed Britton’s unique style, and found myself wrapped up in this story before I knew what was happening. I highly recommend reading the introduction, as it will give you a succinct backstory for the characters involved, and how they came to be where the story takes place. The world and character building were superb, and despite the fact that Renbourn is meant to be an alien, he felt like a real person, as did the other characters that populate this book. I enjoyed the twist on what we consider normal – with those who have paired minds vs those who don’t. The imagery is vivid, and it’s like watching a sci-fi movie unfold around you as you read. This makes me want to explore more of the author’s writing in the future.

Of Classrooms and Cerapin Nights 5

Like Julius Caesar’s Gaul on ancient Alpha-Earth, my days at Burtolbur could be divided into three parts. Part one began each day, when Jolbar and I came downstairs for dawn-plate. By now, she was walking and standing much better, although her arms and hands were still a bit jerky. Her expressions still remained slightly lopsided. The Joline side was usually a second or two quicker in sharing a smile. The Bar side showed more wonder, worry, and sometimes confusion. In many ways, she was adapting to having true sight, just as I was. Each morn, Pidghe greeted us with sunny, cheerful exuberance as they laid out our meals and asked what we desired them to do that day. At first, they thought the house-masters should dine alone and the servants later. Jolbar and I quickly talked them out of that thinking. 

“There’s but four of us here,” she told them, “and it makes sense not to not table together.” 

“If we sit together,” I added, “you two can greatly help me practice speaking in your language.” 

I also liked having the household, such as it was, sharing as much time in one place as possible. I was used to large, animated chambers filled to the brim with the energies of my wives, children, help-hands, doctors, guards, and guests. Here, I sat in a small house of empty walls, maddeningly quiet rooms, and little I wanted to do. Hearing the Pidghes’ humming, singing, and simple rambling talk about countless ordinary things help, but little here was truly ordinary for me. I have to give Pidghe much credit for teaching me so many things beyond meanings to many of those mind-boggling metaphors and 50 The Third Earth idioms. During our dawn-plate conversations, for example, they told me how Cerapin education worked. 

“An orphan-hive is something of a misnomer. All the parentless children we know live on the lowest level of a pyramid that is essentially a normal school for children from most walks of life. Other than the quarters for those living in the building, each level is full of classrooms, laboratories, libraries, and mock-ups of all kinds of working environments. Children are tested from the time we were able to take tests to determine our aptitudes and proficiencies.” 

Classes are not organized based on age but rather on what skill levels students demonstrated in their special areas. “The highest levels,” Pidghe explained, “have many of the older students that are destined to contribute to technology, medical, management, communications, and scientific pursuits. These levels house most of the advanced equipment. Students attracted to accounting, law, or the church are transferred to schools devoted to these studies. The cream of the crop are sent to coastal centers specializing in oceanography, geology, or space exploration.” 

Other students, as they grew, never made it to these floors and didn’t want to. Instead, they wanted to join trade guilds and be transferred to hives housing those like them. They spent their days in training for construction, transportation work, mining, machine repair, sales, careers in security or the military, and all manner of trades for which they had been apprenticed when they were old enough to leave school. Below these levels were students for whom much wasn’t expected. There were no guilds that would invite them to join. They were destined for kitchen, domestic, factory or other hand-work and other menial labors.

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Dr. Wesley Britton is the author of four non-fiction books, Spy Television (2003), Beyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film (2005), Onscreen and Undercover: The Ultimate Book of Movie Espionage (2006), and The Encyclopedia of TV Spies (2009).

Starting in fall 2015, his science fiction/ mystery/ espionage series, The Beta-Earth Chronicles debuted with the ground-breaking The Blind Alien. Throughout 2016 to 2019, 4 sequels followed including The Blood of Balnakin, When War Returns, A Throne for an Alien and The Third Earth.

Return to Alpha is Wesley’s first stand alone novel and Alpha Tales 2044 is his first collection of Beta-Earth short stories. Then Behind Alien Lines came and there is a new collection in the works. 

Britton earned his doctorate in American Literature at the University of North Texas in 1990. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-host of online radio’s “Dave White Presents” broadcast over KSAV.org. For DWP, Wesley contributed interviews with authors, musicians, actors, and many entertainment insiders.

Wesley taught English at Harrisburg Area Community College until his retirement in 2016. Blind due to the progressive genetic disease retiniteous pigmentosa. Wesley served on the Board of Directors for Vision Resources of Central Pennsylvania for 14 years. He has been writing book reviews for sites like BlogCritics.org and BookPleasures.com for nearly 30 years.

The Blind Alien won the 2020 Recommended Read award from Author Shout.

Alpha Tales 2044 won Recommended read 2021 from Author Shout.

If you love everything spies, double agents, Bond and espionage, then check out Wesley’s Secret Dossier.

Find out more about the Beta-Earth Chronicles at https://www.drwesleybritton.com

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