Embargo on Hope

*Embargo on Hope* is the first novel in the Star Marked series, written by Justin Doyle and released on August 20th, 2021.

## Plot

An embargo has been set by the Planetary Alliance around the planet Vastire. The P.A. hopes to eliminate the caste system on Vastire, a social construct that violates the sentient rights of the lowest caste members, the Olan-Har. Unfortunately, after three years, the embargo hasn't changed anything and the Olan-Har are worse off than ever: starving, sick, and dying by the hundreds each day.

Darynn Mark, a teenage Olan-Har living in the slums of the city of Ziphyr, works with his best friend Pavlar Solia to help the Olan-Har survive. The P.A. is sending quasi-weekly shipments to Vastire intended for the poor, but most of them are stolen by the greedy Olan-Har gangs. Darynn and Pavlar have successfully raided a few shipments, and now it's time to raid another one.

Kaylaa Reesae breaks through the embargo on a stealth ship as one of Senator Shuka of Yiptae's bodyguards. She stays behind to mentor Darynn, with the hope of pushing him into inciting a revolution to end the caste system. Darynn is reluctant, as that is exactly what his father Zilpohn Mark did, resulting in his family's fall from the Elite caste to the Olan-Har. It's also a personal mission for Kaylaa, as her father was supposedly killed by Zilpohn on Yiptae, and she wants to know why he was there and what drove Zilpohn to kill her father.

Kaylaa's father told her Zilpohn would mumble about the Temple of Stria-Fate while in jail, and she convinces Darynn that they should go there. Darynn is leery of following in his father's footsteps because what will save him from his father's apparent madness. Kaylaa eventually convinces him to go. Before they can leave Ziphyr, they run into Fyra Solia, Pavlar's psychic sister, and she decides to go along with them.

Read the novel Embargo on Hope to find out more.

## Synopsis

Spoilers ahead!

The novel opens in the middle of a raid of critical supplies from the P.A. conducted by Darynn and Pavlar. Unfortunately, things go awry, and after a short duel with a Militia Captain, Pavlar dies trying to save Darynn. Darynn blames himself, but all is not lost - the only thing he takes away from the shipment is the medicine required to save Pavlar’s sick sister, Fyra. Darynn delivers the bad news to Pavlar’s parents, along with the medicine, then wanders aimlessly, simultaneously blaming his gods, the Iveleen, and lamenting his loneliness and misfortune.

Suddenly, he’s kidnapped by a foreign spaceship that slipped through the embargo. P.A. Senator Shuka pleads with him to try to end the caste system and therefore end the embargo. The Senator sought out Darynn because his father, Zilpohn Mark, was an infamous hero who later turned traitor for starting a revolution against the Virin-leen, the royalty on planet Vastire. After narrowly avoiding detection, the Senator’s bodyguard, Kaylaa, is left to try to convince Darynn to follow in his father's footsteps. Kaylaa has personal stakes in this quest: her father was allegedly killed by Zilpohn in a prison on her home planet, Yiptae. However, they were supposed to be friends, and because of that relationship, Kaylaa knows the place where Darynn's father started to go mad: the Temple of Stria-Fate. Darynn, Kaylaa, and a recovered Fyra decide to go there - an abandoned Temple in a treacherous jungle.

Darynn finds that he has mysterious powers that Kaylaa helps to cultivate. The powers appear to have been unlocked by Canfod Barma, the last of the Barma family in Hargonla. Darynn tests his powers for the first time when Fyra is gravely injured by a shadow person, Axkar Diteria, and is shocked when he nearly completely heals her almost-severed shoulder.

Their path takes them through the northern slums into an endless grass prairie and on into a primeval forest. Along the way, they encounter a family of necromancers, a duel between gigantic Minotaurs, a Gryphon, a civilization of lizard people living in the trees, a den of monstrous wolves, and finally, the home of a crazed priest, Kirstos. Darynn develops feelings for Fyra along the way, but he can’t tell if she feels the same. They discuss the consequences of using magic - the necromancers find themselves sandwiched between life and death, while Kaylaa doesn’t feel any emotions. That helps explain her steadfast and cold nature. Fyra and Darynn wonder what their consequences could be - Fyra is deathly afraid to use her clairvoyant power (which she can’t control anyway), while Darynn is anxious to explore his newfound chaotic power, despite the risks.

The crazed priest leads them into the Temple. They defeat a few traps and puzzles, as well as the immortal Vampire, the First Lady of the Temple, that Darynn completely obliterates with his destructive magic. Inside the Temple, they find the so-called Great Secret: evidence suggesting that the gods were only powerful aliens that charmed the barbarian Vastirians. The revelations send Kirstos into full-blown madness, while Fyra especially is shaken by the news. Darynn is unsure how to feel, since he blames the Iveleen for his misfortune… but he can’t blame them if they’re not gods. Plus he knows that this is the secret that changed his father from a loving man to a distant father. Level-headed Fyra warns that the evidence is circumstantial, and they’ll need more to overturn five hundred years of history. Kirstos’s madness leads to a battle between him and the rest of the party. Darynn is too weak to fight him, but Kaylaa shows her own respectable power and kills the mad priest.

They return home to find Fyra’s parents have been kidnapped by the Shard as a means to get to Darynn. With the help of Zilpohn’s old swordmaster, Master Makai, they infiltrate Shard Headquarters and break out her parents. But they also find the source of Darynn’s power: over a century of genetic experiments, culminating in implanting a magic gene in him. They are captured by the leader of the Shard, Commander Aseus, who tells them he knew they were in the building all along.

In exchange for their freedom, Aseus offers to provide the equipment needed so Darynn could use his awesome power to destroy the ships of the embargo and save the Olan-har. Darynn reluctantly agrees, and two days later, he launches into space. He initially falters, finding himself unable to kill hundreds of innocent people, but Aseus takes Fyra hostage and forces him into it. Now in an uncontrollable rage, he demolishes most of the ships of the embargo.

The people of Vastire hail him as a hero, but Darynn struggles with the fact that he was designed as a weapon, and Aseus was able to pull his trigger so easily. Fyra struggles with feelings for him, but is also afraid of him. They know they must travel to Yiptae, to discover the truth of the Iveleen, but that can wait for another day. Together, they visit the makeshift grave of Pavlar, hand-in-hand.

## Development

The author was fascinated by the embargo of South Africa to end apartheid, and that event gave rise to the thought "what if there was an embargo that surrounded an entire planet?" From there, the novel grew organically, as the author is very much a "pantser." An outline was never written for the book.

The author started *Embargo on Hope* in June of 2005 and completed the first draft in 2006. He worked on it off and on for the next fifteen years, continuing to tweak and throw in new ideas along the way. Then when the COVID-19 quarantine hit in the United States, he devoted a lot of time to improving his writing craft, and wrote an entire new draft of the novel by the end of 2020.

At beginning of 2021, he put it through the beta reader phase. Two readers gracefully read the novel and provided their comments.

While performing the "final" manuscript edit based on the beta reader comments, Atmosphere Press responded to Justin's manuscript submission from December, stating they wanted to publish the book. He abruptly shifted gears from self-publishing to publishing through them, and finished the beta edit process in late February.

## Critical Response

Reader's Favorite rated it as 5 Stars: "In his novel Embargo on Hope, Justin Doyle draws the reader into the story with a strong sense of world-building and character development. Fans of the Star Wars saga will discover a whole new universe ripe with interplanetary politics... any fan of science fiction or action-adventure would enjoy this book."