The Cover
Ecosystem Book Blurb
Seventeen-year-old Sarah is a Sensor, gifted
with the ability to survive within the sentient Ecosystem that swept away human
civilization centuries ago. While the remnants of humankind huddle in small
villages of stone, Sarah uses her psychic connection to the Ecosystem to travel
freely in the wild in search of food, water, and fuel. Sarah doesn’t fear the
Ecosystem—but she hates it for killing her mother when Sarah was a child. When
she hunts, she hunts not only for her people’s sustenance but for revenge.
Then Miriam, an apprentice Sensor, is
lost in the Ecosystem, and Sarah sets out to rescue her. Joining Sarah is
Miriam’s beloved, Isaac, a boy who claims to possess knowledge of the Ecosystem
that will help their people survive. The harrowing journey to find the missing
apprentice takes Sarah and Isaac into the Ecosystem’s deadliest places. And it takes
Sarah into the unexplored territory of her own heart, where she discovers
feelings that threaten to tear her—and her society—apart.
A thrilling fantasy adventure from the
author of Freefall and the Survival
Colony series, Ecosystem is the first
book in a YA trilogy that includes The
Devouring Land (2019) and House of
Earth, House of Stone (2020).
Ecosystem Excerpt
I’m first of the Sensors to return. Not surprising, as my
circuit was the shortest, my track the safest. The others have gone deep into
the Ecosystem, to places I’ve only heard of, realms I can only imagine. In time,
if I’m successful, I’ll seek out the same places, where the game is thickest
and the dangers greatest. In time, if I live, I’ll train the next generation of
Sensors, as Aaron has trained me.
But tonight, I’ll celebrate. The village will celebrate. They will celebrate me.
We will meet in the great hall, the entire community
assembled as one, except for the few threshers assigned to guard the periphery
against the Ecosystem’s attacks. In the stone hearth, the firestarters will
light the blaze that is the Ecosystem’s chief grievance against us, that and
the cutting tools with which the threshers keep the forest from encroaching on
the pavilion of stone. As the flickering shadows grow against the vault’s stone
walls, the Sensors will step forward to be acknowledged by the mass of
commoners. In their identical uniforms of close-fitting brown fur, cut short to
expose muscled arms and long legs, the members of the Sensorship will stand
like statues: aloof, unsmiling, their Sense of the Ecosystem isolating them
from the community they’re sworn to serve. And for the first time, clothed in
the matching outfit I wore on today’s hunt, I will stand with them. I’ll stand
straight and still as the rest, though my heart will tremble with excitement.
Then Nathan, as Conservator of our order, will deliver the
customary address, reminding the populace of how the Sensorship came to be. In
his deep and commanding voice, he’ll speak of the days of old, when humans were
numerous and powerful, when their towns and trails covered the land. He’ll
speak of towers that climbed to the skies, things like giant birds that flew
across earth and water and air. He’ll tell us of devices that enabled one man
to hail another across the globe, ghostly screens that enabled one to see
another’s face no matter the distance between them. We who’ve known only the
Ecosystem these past hundred generations will find the picture laughable, but
none of us will laugh. Even the village children will stand silent and solemn,
seeing in the shadows stirred by Nathan’s voice visions of a time that once
was, a time that can never be again.
And then, his voice sunk to a whisper, Nathan will speak of
the Ecosystem’s rise. He’ll tell how, unseen and undreamed of by those who
claimed earth’s dominion, the planet’s innumerable threads of life knitted
themselves into one, the first dim flickers of awareness burgeoning over time
into full angry consciousness. He’ll speak of cities overwhelmed by jungle or
swallowed by monsters from below, farmlands turned to lakes of poison and
parklands roamed by deadly predators. He’ll spare no detail, yet his words will
fall far short of reality. It was a planetary outpouring of grief and rage, a
coordinated attack that swept human civilization from the face of the earth. It
gave rise to the world we know, a world in which the Ecosystem rules and we who
were once its masters huddle in its shadow.
But it didn’t destroy us all. Its desire was thwarted, and
so its anger festers to this day. For among the few of our kind who were left,
there arose a fraction who discovered within themselves a hint of the
Ecosystem’s will, an ability to hear its dark whispers. These were the first
Sensors, and as they gathered the survivors around them, there arose the first
villages of stone, the first walls and firewells, the first masters and
apprentices. Down to the present day, the Sensors have used their power for
good, their Sense of the Ecosystem freeing them to roam the forest in the daily
hunt for food and fuel. They’ve served their people selflessly, renouncing all
ties that might distract from their vital calling: ties of love, family,
children. We know nothing of how other villages fare; for all we can tell,
we’re alone. But so long as the Sensorship stands, we will not fall.
When Nathan finishes, the commoners will applaud, though
they’ll have understood his words only the way a blind man understands what it
means to see. As the village’s newest Sensor, I’ll be singled out for my
investiture, receiving from Aaron’s hand the token he received from his own
master, and his master from the one before, and so on back to the beginning,
something no one outside this line of masters and apprentices has seen. It will
be small, and Aaron will pass it to me in secret, an item wrapped in fur for me
to unwrap when I’m alone. His wrinkled face will smile as he bestows it on me,
and his smile will call back to me the earliest of my memories, the morning
when, looking up at his face as he now looks up at mine, I first heard from his
lips the new name he’d given me. And I’ll remember, too, what I learned many
years later: that the name of Sarah
was another’s name first, that one so old as Aaron would never have taken a
girl of three as his apprentice if not for the other apprentice he’d trained
and lost. It will be a moment for the community to welcome me after a lifetime
of preparation, a moment for me to mourn the one who came before, though I
remember nothing of her except her name. It will be a moment for me to honor
her stolen memory, and to hate the Ecosystem for taking her from me.
And then the village will feast on the thing I killed, the
life I tore from the Ecosystem in retribution for the pain it has caused me.
With a stone pestle, Aaron will smear its blood on my cheeks, and the
firestarters will roast its flesh, each member of the community sampling a
small bite before they consume the bushmeat caught by the other Sensors. Aaron,
as Chief Sensor, will give a speech, and the name of Sarah will be spoken again and again, while the congregation grows
drowsy with food and fire. And when he’s finished, I’ll walk to the center of
the gathering, and I’ll eat the one part of my kill saved for me, the first and
only bite of food I’ll be permitted this day.
I will eat its heart.
In itself, that will be nothing new. I’ve eaten the
Ecosystem’s heart every night since I first learned of the one who came before.
It has tasted like gall in my throat, but I’ve choked it down just the same.
Only tonight, there will be a difference. Tonight, it will
taste good.
About The Author
Joshua David Bellin
has been writing novels since he was eight years old (though the first few were
admittedly very short). A college teacher by day, he is the author of three
science fiction novels for teens and adults: the two-part Survival Colony
series (Survival Colony 9 and Scavenger of Souls) and the deep-space
adventure Freefall. His new book, the
YA fantasy Ecosystem, releases on
April 22, 2018 (Earth Day). Josh loves to read, watch movies, and spend time in
Nature with his kids. Oh, yeah, and he likes monsters. Really scary monsters.
Ecosystem on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39663460-ecosystem
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