The Journing Plague
by Shaune Lafferty Webb
March 19-22
Kai Astada is a member of the Journer caste, a once-respected class whose members are responsible for piloting passengers and freight across Pedora. Now, however, the Journer wards have been quarantined in a bid to stifle a raging plague that their totalitarian government alleges is being spread by the reckless behaviour of the Journers.
Two years after graduating from the Lycea, the pilot training academy in Ularon City, Kai receives a summons from Henneh Sek, a fellow-pilot and old friend from his home-ward. Her summons draws Kai to the Duck Down Club, an infamous haunt of lower ranked Journers. Here he meets renowned pilot Bes Gannaline-ro who produces stolen documents that ostensibly prove the plague a Pedorate fabrication. Robbed of his Journer identity, Kai is press-ganged into helping Ro and Henneh, the leaders of a Resistance movement that claims he has the connections to uncover the truth. Under the guidance of Vee, his contact, Kai reluctantly takes to the tunnels that lead him back into his home-ward, where a chance encounter with irascible siblings, Doon and Gaed, and the light-footed young one, Mig, sees the four form an unlikely alliance to complete his mission.
But the truth is not as straightforward as the Resistance believes and what Kai and his companions uncover will ultimately turn the world on its head.
About the Author
Shaune Lafferty Webb was born in Brisbane, Australia. Her father was an amateur astronomer and her eldest brother, an avid science fiction reader, so perhaps it was inevitable that she developed an early enthusiasm for writing speculative fiction.
After obtaining a degree in geology from the University of Queensland, Shaune subsequently worked in geochemical laboratories, exploration companies, and, while living in the United States, at a multinational scientific institute involved in exploration beneath the ocean floors.
Her short stories have appeared in AntipodeanSF, The Nautilus Engine, Blue Crow Magazine, and The Vandal and her novels, ‘Bus Stop on a Strange Loop’ and ‘Balanced in An Angel’s Eye’, were released by Winterbourne Publishing in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
‘Cold Faith’, the first book in The Safe Harbour Chronicle series, was released in May 2015 and, ‘Faithless’, the second in the trilogy, in April 2017, while the third and final volume in the series, ‘The Unforgotten’, was published by Hague Publishing in November 2019.
‘Once a Dog’, an anthropomorphic novel, was released in May 2018 by Jaffa Books; the novel was nominated for the 2018 Ursa Major Award in the category of Best Novel and ultimately ranked first runner-up in the awards ceremony held at Columbus, Ohio, 26 May 2019.
Shaune lives in Brisbane with her husband, a research scientist, and when not writing, she is kept busy pandering to their aging border collie.
