An introspective sci-fi thriller with speculative and psychological depth.
A lonely teen discovers dangerous truths and buried powers in Morris’s compelling sci-fi thriller. Fifteen-year-old Kai Chapman has spent a decade in a bleak reform school with no memory of who he was before. When a stranger appears claiming to know his murdered parents, Kai follows him into the desert and into the hidden world of the Heightened, a persecuted population of humans with enhanced senses, once used by global governments and now hunted by them. Kai must master his Heightened abilities before time runs out.
Morris’s decision to ground his sci-fi world in quiet introspection rather than spectacle is a bold one, and it pays off. Kai’s early revelations: that he can hear real-life events from impossible distances, hint at a supernatural thriller, but the novel is less concerned with cool powers than with the emotional toll of having them. The story slowly shifts from psychological mystery to dystopian survival tale, taking readers from bleak school hallways to shadowy deserts to the lush subterranean haven, the Sanctuary. Kai’s journey from isolation to agency is sensitively handled, and Morris’s clipped prose, peppered with dry humor, fits his narrator’s guarded worldview. Themes of institutional betrayal, inherited power, and fear of difference are handled with nuance. A thought-provoking blend of speculative fiction and psychological realism, the book critiques the systems that erase identity under the guise of protection and explores what it means to fight back, not just for survival, but for selfhood.
A gripping SF thriller that interrogates control, erasure, and the cost of reclaiming the truth.
Pub date April 30, 2025
ISBN 979-8218638498
Four Apples Publishing
Price $9.99 (|USD) Paperback, $7.99 Kindle edition, $0.00 Kindle Unlimited