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Stellar Assassin
Al Lancaster is a shipwrecked tech scavenger who wakes up from Suspense on the auction block of Hercules Station in the alien-run Markan star system, light years distant from Earth. The only human in a star-traveling culture where ancient Guilds of Trade, Assassins and Spies train solo beings to serve alien masters, Al finds that survival depends on his human predatory instincts. He becomes an industrial thief, bounty hunter and sometimes “hit man” for alien merchants, a job that deeply troubles him as a Zen Buddhist. Hope flares briefly when he falls in love with the alien cat-woman Delo Quar Anken, only to see her kidnapped by a sadistic alien merchant. But Al vows to survive, even when he is faced with his greatest challenge—to carry out a “hit” on the Messiah of Death, a plasma cloud alien that literally cannot be killed.
354 pages, Paperback
First published March 9, 2013
21 people are currently reading
248 people want to read
About the author
T. Jackson King
51 books48 followersT. Jackson King (Tom) is an Amazon bestselling science fiction and urban fantasy author. He is a lifelong reader of SciFi/Fantasy stories and his favorite authors have included Darynda Jones, BR Kingsolver, K.F. Breene, Martha Carr, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Andre Norton, J. K. Rowling, Ann Christy, Lois McMaster Bujold and Ursula LeGuin. Outside of fantasy and science fiction he has enjoyed the novels of Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, and the urban fantasy crime mysteries of Darynda Jones.
Tom began writing SF novels at age 38, when he discovered he had read all the Human-Alien first contact or encounter novels in his local library. So he decided to write his own, thanks to an overactive, very visual imagination. Those early years produced FIRST CONTACT and RETREAD SHOP. When the New York City publishing houses ignored his later novels because they had no Hollywood tie-in, he went to several small presses, then began self-publishing as an Indy author in 2011. He loves that readers in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia are some of his most loyal readers!
Before becoming a bestselling author, Tom worked in a radiocarbon lab at UC Riverside and earned an MA degree in Archaeology from UCLA. His interests in ancient history, ancient cultures and journalism got him several government agency jobs that led him to roam the raw landscape of the Western United States where he worked as a federal archaeologist and newspaper journalist.
Tom lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA and hangs with a group of smart and tolerant Westerners. Divorce taught him to smile a lot and to work at being a Nice Guy. Which earned him the love of his wife Sue. Still, he is pretty weird. Has been since fourth grade when he began reading SciFi. Since then, he and Authority have rarely been in agreement. Readers are welcome to visit his T. Jackson King page.
Tom began writing SF novels at age 38, when he discovered he had read all the Human-Alien first contact or encounter novels in his local library. So he decided to write his own, thanks to an overactive, very visual imagination. Those early years produced FIRST CONTACT and RETREAD SHOP. When the New York City publishing houses ignored his later novels because they had no Hollywood tie-in, he went to several small presses, then began self-publishing as an Indy author in 2011. He loves that readers in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia are some of his most loyal readers!
Before becoming a bestselling author, Tom worked in a radiocarbon lab at UC Riverside and earned an MA degree in Archaeology from UCLA. His interests in ancient history, ancient cultures and journalism got him several government agency jobs that led him to roam the raw landscape of the Western United States where he worked as a federal archaeologist and newspaper journalist.
Tom lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA and hangs with a group of smart and tolerant Westerners. Divorce taught him to smile a lot and to work at being a Nice Guy. Which earned him the love of his wife Sue. Still, he is pretty weird. Has been since fourth grade when he began reading SciFi. Since then, he and Authority have rarely been in agreement. Readers are welcome to visit his T. Jackson King page.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 12, 2013
really enjoyed the story, Al's challenges are intriguing. Was a little hard to lose yourself in the world while reading but I'm somewhat new to the genre so this may be how the genre is. Was a good read and satisfying to finish.
June 5, 2015
Having just read Retread Shop, it was nice to pick up this book and find that it continues in the same universe with many of the same strange aliens who, this time around, do not seem nearly as strange.
We get to see how Al Lancaster, Human, Predator manages to survive and flourish in this environment. His friends and fellow humans are dead and gone and somehow he ends up apprenticing to the Assassin's Guild where he's given the task of killing an exotically beautiful Alien biped female courier and stealing the memory chips she is carrying. But, Al can't bring himself to kill her and the rest is somewhat predictable.
Of course this is only a part of the story. The battle against a gaseous alien being that convinces other beings that it is the Messiah and that they should sacrifice themselves to join with it is the main part of the story.
I'm not doing justice to the book with this description. Read it, you'll enjoy it.
We get to see how Al Lancaster, Human, Predator manages to survive and flourish in this environment. His friends and fellow humans are dead and gone and somehow he ends up apprenticing to the Assassin's Guild where he's given the task of killing an exotically beautiful Alien biped female courier and stealing the memory chips she is carrying. But, Al can't bring himself to kill her and the rest is somewhat predictable.
Of course this is only a part of the story. The battle against a gaseous alien being that convinces other beings that it is the Messiah and that they should sacrifice themselves to join with it is the main part of the story.
I'm not doing justice to the book with this description. Read it, you'll enjoy it.
August 17, 2014
This is the first book that I've read in the SciFi genre. It was a little difficult to get on track to where the story is going because it was (kind of) hard for me to visualize the setting and the physicality of each alien characters (and there were a lot!). Nevertheless it was a good adventure! It's a good read. I would like to see this in the big screen though. Thanks to Mr. T. Jackson King for my copy!
September 7, 2014
This is a great book for seasoned sci-fi readers. I love the wide range of alien life in this book. They come in all shapes ans sizes. And the personal conflict of the main character belief of Buddhism. And need to live, as a assassin to get by in a world. where is the only human.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews