Dark-Roast-Press-Ebooks
J C Natal incubates her works for a long time, and also sends them to careful beta readers before they ever reach the desk of Helgaleena. And the wait for the sequel to the award-winning Rysykk's Rise was stretched tortuously long for one of her fans at least-- me! But the careful conceptualizing process results in the quality of vision her many loyal fans expect.
She has created two future Earths for Dark Roast Press; one is the universe of In Service where debt slavery is a way of life, and her bleak vision, redeemed by love, rocketed the book to number two in the P & E Readers' Poll during the first year of our e-press existence. In the very same poll Rysykk's Rise, set in a completely different universe, was in the top ten of its category.
There is a gene that renders a segment of the future Earth's population vulnerable to a horrible virus known as the Rysykk Plague. Those who survive it can digest only one nutrient: blood. Discrimination against them is harsh and when an individual is known to carry the gene, life becomes an obstacle course of political and criminal misuses.
In the first book, this highly stratified future's underbelly has been our hero's only home until his teens. Alarin is 'rescued' by an industrialist ostensibly in need of a rent-boy. Bit by bit his full history is revealed, and how his heritage can aid him in winning equality for the minority who could, or have, been changed.
Rysykk's Remedy faces our hero and his lover, the enigmatic Maleus Bryant, with challenges in the glittering surface of the ruling elites and back upon the lowest levels, where the unscrupulous are using Bottomsiders for guinea pigs in cruel genetic experiments. I didn't think the level of action and suspense in the first book could be surpassed, but it is. Alarin and his future wife are directly involved in the rescue of Maleus this time. That is all I will divulge, but the world-building is gripping and moves you at your deepest emotional levels, just as our hero's mission plumbs the foundations of future supercities.
I had very little polishing to do on this particular tale. Just a few commas and so on. All the rest is pure JC Natal. And it was worth the wait.
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