Amidst Alien Stars by Clayton Graham.
Book 2-Milijun Series!
5 Stars: It will capture your imagination!
An unbidden journey to a new world. A mind-bending search for intergalactic empathy. Will mankind ever understand the true meaning of the alien interactions with Earth?
Following their terrifying capture from their home planet, Laura Sinclair and son, Jason, lead a group of desperate humans in a bid to forge their own future, and that of the entire human race.
Aboard an alien space station, orbiting a mysterious planet in a strange new galaxy, they find themselves as collaborators in a breathtaking scheme of cosmic survival—for aliens and humans alike. But who can they really trust as they struggle to understand the challenging and hostile environment that holds them in a grip of iron?
To succeed, they must solve the puzzle of extraterrestrial races in the throes of a perplexing and historic conflict. But will that be a bridge too far?
If you like Close Encounters, Contact, and Arrival, then you’ll love Amidst Alien Stars, the standalone second book in a spellbinding new alien interaction series from Clayton Graham.
“There is world building of such depth and lush detail that you could almost feel it.” Kay Mack TOP 1000 REVIEWER
“Not only is this an exciting, action-packed page turner – I love the intelligence reflected, the witty dialogue, and the genuine depth in the characters’ emotions.” Meenaz Lodhi
“Admirable world-building and the unsurpassable, indefatigable, drive of the human spirit to not just survive, but to thrive, power this engrossing sequel to the author’s debut science fiction novel, Milijun.” Mallory A Haws
5 Stars: It Will Capture Your Imagination!
Milijun Book Two: Amidst Alien Stars is finally here. Laura Sinclair and her son Jason desperately try to navigate the dangerous planet where aliens threaten not only their survival, but the whole human race.
Chapter one finds Laura “studying the growth tanks” where each child will grow to maturity with her son’s DNA. Now in her forties, she finds herself grandmother to many, part human and part alien.
Here is a conversation between Jason and Helena Belmonte in Chapter Eight: “Helena Belmonte suddenly appeared from behind a nearby tree.
…As always, she was dressed in her Eucla clothing: a white dress blouse and dark uniform trousers. Her blond hair flowed free, and her face carried a nervous smile. She carried her tunic under one arm. She doesn’t look like someone trained to kill with one well-placed blow, Jason thought. Still, appearances are deceptive. He briefly wondered how she could have been so stupid as to succumb to the moronic advances of Simon Cordell.
…She took a step towards him. “Can we talk?”
…Jason shrugged and sat down with his back to the wall. Helena came and sat beside him, a metre distant, her slim legs almost up to her chin.
… “I suppose you heard about Simon?” Helena said.
…Jason glanced at her. Her eyes were red from crying. The smile was gone, and her face was a picture of misery.
… “I heard. Did Susan Carmody send you?”
…With tears threatening, she shook her head. “She told me what she had done to Simon, but she did not ask me to speak to you.”
… “I don’t know whether Simon Cordell deserved what he got, and maybe only you can answer that, but I don’t agree with what Susan did.”
…Helena looked into the distance, a faint tremor on her lips. “We were stupid. I was lonely and frightened of this place. It’s not natural. None of it.” She managed a faint smile. “They tell me the aliens will fix his injuries in next to no time.”
… “I don’t think he will bother you again,” Jason said.
… “I can heel-kick as well as any officer here,” Helena declared. “I do have some strength. I think Susan meant well. She was trying to protect me.”
… “One of her girls.”
…Helena almost laughed, then her face grew serious. “I said Susan didn’t send me. She didn’t. It was me who wanted to see you.” She appeared nervous. “You know the aliens more than anybody here. Can I ask you some questions?”
…Jason could feel the tension in her voice, see it in her aura. He just nodded. On Earth, he had been the First Seen. Chosen by the aliens, or, rather, by the RNasia. His vacation with his mother had been savagely interrupted, and he had been forced into adulthood more rapidly than seemed good for his mental well-being. But now, what storms had raged through his mind had abated. Turmoil still existed, but it was a gentle, thought-provoking turmoil, one that led him to accept his role among the human captors. Schooldays were a mere candle in the roar of a nuclear sun, a distant memory buried in a distant world. He remained the First Seen, and perhaps would always be so.
…Helena said, “I know we have provided the hybrids for the aliens.
…I know they are supposed to be an improvement on both our races. I even think I understand how they will use them to explore the galaxy without fear of physical or mental degradation.” She turned her face towards Jason, and he saw such a loss of future hope, such despair, that he felt his own strength and beliefs beginning to crumble under an assault of uncertainty. “But I don’t know how the women fit in, even how you and your mother fit in. Have they finished with us?
…Are we eventually to be discarded once the hybrids are free of the tanks? Will we meet them, see our own offspring? And what happens then?” She put her head in her hands. “Will they want more hybrids from us? Will we ever see Earth again?”
…The possibility that the Gliezans would repeat the hybrid experiment on this orbiting station disturbed him. He wondered whether it was the obvious thing for them to do—produce more hybrids with their captives, and never return to Earth at all. That would devastate everybody and would rule out the need for interplanetary collaboration.
…The thought made him sick to his stomach. The Milijun enhancements and direct contact with the aliens had matured him well beyond his fifteen years, somehow increased the power of his mind, but there were times when teenage naivety broke through.
… “I wish I could answer your questions,” Jason responded eventually, “but I can’t. I can only repeat what we have been told. We are part of an alien plan for future cooperation between our two worlds, and that might have a great and wonderful outcome, or it might turn out to be a genetic and spiritual disaster. We are, if you like, an experiment that will enable both worlds to explore the cosmos as allies.”
I encourage you to read ‘Milijun’ (Book One) and follow it up with ‘Amidst Alien Stars’ (Milijun Book Two). Author Clayton Graham will capture your imagination, take you on an adventure with characters that are both human and alien, with a story so philosophical that it almost defies fiction.
Editorial Review and Endorsement by Book Marketing Global Network.
Review by Stephanie: 5.0 out of 5 Stars. This book transports you to another world. Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2020. Verified Purchase. Amidst Alien Stars thrusts readers into a foreign otherworldly setting where humans confront feelings of captivity by the Gliezan alien race while being housed on a space station orbiting an alien home planet known as Glieze. The story kickstarts readers into the confusions and tribulations of the humans being housed, allowing readers to slowly assess the backstory of situation that the humans currently find themselves in. Through a third person point of view, readers follow the story’s first protagonist, Laura Sinclair, and learn of the human’s perceived role in an alien-human hybridization program of which we find the humans to be extremely skeptical of to say the least. We discover that Sinclair’s son Jason, the story’s second protagonist, is what the alien race has termed as, “The First Seen,” and how this mother-son duo plays distinct and significant roles in mediating between the interaction and dissemination of knowledge amid the humans and aliens while the human space survivors complete their purported mission of collaboration in galactic exploration with the Gliezans, set for an unsuspected amount of time before they are returned to Earth. The mystery of truth and trust between the spiritually advanced alien races and human race poses a conundrum throughout, while readers gain a deeper sense of character development as the plot thickens and the pressure is placed on the development of the hybrid children to be both physically and spiritually compatible to prove the experimentation and the future of human survival a success.
The author, Clayton Graham, does a fine job in writing a compelling story with interchanging parts bathed in suspense and speculation with a New Age twist. Envisioning the different groups of characters – aliens, robots, and humans alike – was fascinating and I especially enjoyed the way that Graham portrayed the foreign entities as believable alien characters with a historical account of their own civilization. Although this is the second book in the Milijun series, I greatly appreciated Graham’s succinct preface and opening chapters which I felt was intelligently crafted to allow for the second book to hold strong as a standalone novel. The quality of writing in this book sparks enough intrigue and enjoyment to considering going backwards into the story and read the first book. I was impressed by the fact that while reading, my mind was begging for the storyline to be adapted into a motion picture. Graham’s descriptive writing in this outer-space Sci-Fi novel had me imagining how each scene, and the characters within, would look while interacting on the big screen. Thoroughly enjoyed, I highly recommend this novel especially if you are keen on being transported into another dimension.
Review by Ian J. Miller: 5.0 out of 5 Stars. Reflective science fiction. Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2020. Verified Purchase. This book is the second of a series, and there are several references to book 1 (which I have not read). I think it is sufficiently self-contained that it can be read as stand-alone, although the several references back to book one happenings that were not really relevant to the present issues were a little annoying. The background is that a number of Australians were abducted by an alien ship and sent to the planet Glieze, or more accurately, a space station above the planet that has a number of sections, each one devoted to one of the “nations” on the planet below. It turns out that the natural people of the planet cannot survive going “there and back” through space, but they had developed sentient robot-life forms to do that. What the humans were abducted for was to make hybrids; half-human half-Gliezan, to do that space travel. It was not clear to me why the Gliezans cared, as robots would be just as good as hybrids. However, the Gliezans were also scrapping between each other, and there was a fear the hybrids might be soldiers. The hybrids grew to the equivalent of 18-year-olds in tanks in a matter of weeks. Another oddity of these hybrids is they have a genetic human mother and father, so what was the alien part? That is not explained.
The level of science is fairly low, although the aliens are claimed to be able to access additional dimensions and some of what they do complies well with that. Well done there. The descriptions of the space station, the aliens and the planet are good. The humans gradually discover that the aliens have this conflict, at least between two lots of them, and the way the aliens try to hide this is well depicted. Gradually the aliens are drawn into the conflict, and they try to draw the humans in also. The characters are quite well-drawn. The action is well-described, but the action is also somewhat mild, and it is also a little repetitive in nature, i.e., the same sort of thing tends to repeat, and resolution tends to be “off-stage”. The aliens tend to be enigmatic, especially the Gerb who have a very truncated way of expressing themselves. Overall, a very imaginative story, if with a somewhat slow-moving reflective plot and with well-drawn characters in nature and emotion. My grading is somewhere between four and five stars, but I am starting the new year feeling generous.
Review by Retha: 5.0 out of 5 Stars. Great! Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2020. Verified Purchase. The plot in the story along with the characters and their adventures were all so captivating! Most of the time I was kept on the edge of my couch, turning page after page; it kept me intrigued the whole time.
I actually came into the Milijun series starting with this book as well, so it goes to show that the novel is written in a way that both new readers and those coming back to the story can enjoy it. It has enough of an explanation to elaborate on the how’s and why’s of the story so far, but not too much to bore current fans of the series. Graham’s writing style does suit the sci-fi theme really well, rich in detail, making it easy for the reader to envision the characters, depicting their personalities oh so attractively. The depth in their thought processes and feelings is described amazingly, appropriate to each hurtle in the story line.
The plot entail’s themes of alien abduction; trust issues between humans and their abductors, and dealing with consequences of decisions made. The layering of the story is complex and so in this way, it would be ideal to read the first novel before this book, of course, as you would with a series. There’s tales of individual and group adventures, each tying in with one another as you would expect it to.
The book has enough momentum that builds to climax with the right pace and all of the wow moments at the perfect times. It starts off with a great introduction and the thought processes of the protagonists, allowing for ascension into more complex scenarios. It also has just the right amount of action and thrill to keep it suspenseful consistently and appropriately.
This book is perfect for those who like to take their time and enjoy what they are reading; taking in every single detail. The duration of the book is a decent amount too – not too long, not too short.
Overall, I can say that this is a really well written sci-fi novel that anyone could enjoy – a world that you can dive into straight away and be engrossed from start to finish. Clayton Graham really knows how to keep you wanting more!
Product Details:
Paperback: 402 Pages
Publisher: Independently Published (April 15, 2020)
Language: English
Science Fiction (Alien Invasion, First Contact)
Science Fiction (Action and Adventure)
Science Fiction (Fantasy)
Science Fiction (Military)
Science Fiction (Space Operas)
Amazon Print:
https://www.amazon.com/Amidst-Alien-Stars-Milijun-Book/dp/B0874LYD2Y
Kindle:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Z7JFMCJ/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Customer Ratings:
https://www.amazon.com/Amidst-Alien-Stars-Milijun-Book/dp/B0874LYD2Y#customerReviews
Author’s Page At Book Marketing Global Network:
https://bookmarketingglobalnetwork.com/book-marketing-global-network/author-clayton-graham/
