New Book Series Imagines Climate Change With A Supernatural Twist

The Forgotten Ones is a new series of novels that imagines our children’s children’s future. Climate change has dramatically altered the entire earth and humans are on the verge of extinction. Heeding the call of a mysterious force, Maia must make her way from Aotearoa to the Arctic Circle in search of a better future.

The Forgotten Ones is the creation of US New Zealander Jillian Webster. She is from Zeeland in Michigan, USA, where she was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. After spending most of her youth struggling to conform to this strict religious sect, Webster chose to leave the church for good at the age of 19. The Jehovah’s Witnesses shunned Webster from the church and she was forbidden to speak to her mother, stepfather and siblings ever again.

At the age of 26, Webster put everything she owned in storage, quit her job, and travelled across the earth on her own. This journey was chronicled in her first book, a coming-of-age memoir called Scared to Life, published in 2015.

Now 37, Webster is settled with her Kiwi husband in Wellington where she is writing her climate fiction trilogy. She says:

“My inspiration for the book came while reading the poem by Warsan Shire:

later that night

i held an atlas in my lap

ran my fingers across the whole world

and whispered

where does it hurt?

it answered

everywhere

everywhere

everywhere.

“I studied the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and created a world based on their projections for our children’s future. Ultimately, I wrote with one question in mind: if the earth had a voice, what would she say?”

The first edition of The Weight of a Thousand Oceans was shortlisted for a Wishing Shelf Book Award and the 8th Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published eBook Awards. From the Writer’s Digest judges’ report:

"The scope of the world-building in this book is tremendous. It is original, well described but not overwhelming, clever and creative, and is written so that I felt completely immersed and in awe ... This is a really cool story that mixes a sense of survival in the wilderness with fantasy adventure and futuristic world systems that I thought was original and perfectly measured for the start of an epic series."

The second edition of the first book, The Weight of a Thousand Oceans, was published on 13 July, and the second book, The Burn of a Thousand Suns, is out this month, with the third and final volume due out next year. They will all be available online and at selected bookshops.

Notes

Title: The Weight of a Thousand Oceans

Series: The Forgotten Ones, Book One (second edition)

Author: Jillian Webster

Publisher: Jillian Webster

Pub date: 13 July 2021

ISBN (print): 978-1-7350256-3-6

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-7350256-4-3

Extent: 384 pp

RRP (print): NZD33 / USD16

RRP (ebook): NZD5.50 / USD3.99

Title: The Burn of a Thousand Suns

Series: The Forgotten Ones, Book Two

Author: Jillian Webster

Publisher: Jillian Webster

Pub date: 3 August 2021

ISBN (print): 978-1-7350256-6-7

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-7350256-7-4

Extent: 434 pages

RRP (print): NZD33 / USD16

RRP (ebook): NZD5.50 / USD3.99

Blurb for The Weight of a Thousand Oceans

In a world where cities sprawl like half-submerged skeletons, Maia has spent her entire life hidden within the mountains of New Zealand. Her only companions are her ailing grandfather and a nomadic dog named Huck, and Maia resents being alone. She spends her days wandering the ruins of a population long gone, dreaming of a place where the few humans left behind can start again—a place her grandfather insists is a myth.

But Maia cannot escape a strong and mysterious force calling her out into the world, as well as bizarre events following her around the island. There is something strangely enchanted about the land in which she lives … or is it her?

When Maia hears a rumour that people are heading to The Old Arctic Circle half a world away, she knows this is where her destiny lies—until a devastating turn of events seems to shatter any hope of reaching her destination. Clinging to the edge of her life, Maia must come face to face with the transformative power of fate, discovering the one thing she has spent her life running from may be the only thing to save her. 

The first book in The Forgotten Ones trilogy, The Weight of a Thousand Oceans is one woman’s story about the heart-wrenching perseverance of the human spirit across a forsaken planet.

Blurb for The Burn of a Thousand Suns

After her near-death experience in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Maia has finally accepted who she is—or has she? New and terrifying nightmares have begun, reminding her that along with the good may come an ocean of bad. There is a darkness lurking within...

Arriving in the drowned streets of LA, a strange and dangerous world awaits Maia, who has no time to spare. Thousands of miles sprawl between them and the city of Leucothea in The Old Arctic Circle, filled with deadlands, vicious mobs, and erratic weather. From the relentless heat of the Californian desert to a merciless Arctic sun that never sets, the journey will test them in ways they could never have imagined.

But nothing could prepare Maia for the shocking chain of events that await. Walking an unraveling tightrope between worlds, she will be thrust upon a crossroad of the most gut-wrenching kind—one that no matter which direction she chooses, she may lose everything she holds dear forever.

The second book in The Forgotten Ones trilogy, The Burn of a Thousand Suns continues Maia’s haunting journey as she battles her way towards The Old Arctic Circle.

Author bio

Jillian Webster is the author of the memoir Scared to Life, and the climate fiction trilogy The Forgotten Ones. Originally from Zeeland, Michigan, Jillian now lives in New Zealand with her husband and dog, a collie-mix named Biggie. Find her online at http://www.jillianwebster.com/

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