Blade Runner meets Black Mirror in this tech noir saga.* B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree* Readers’ Favorite® 5-Star Selection”Transient is an exceptionally well-written, thought-provoking novel that ultimately carries a humanist message, contrasting feigned morality with perceived evil.”- Lex Allen, Readers’ FavoriteIn a dark and distant future, death is obsolete.Jonas is a transient: a human spy … distant future, death is obsolete.
Jonas is a transient: a human spy living as an eternal. His mission is simple: always learn, never get caught.
In the year 2578, an immortal regime controls the planet. Endless war has pushed humanity to the brink of extinction. Desperate to survive, the remaining factions deploy teenage spies, hoping to defeat the enemy from within.
After years in the lion’s den, Jonas has grown to admire the eternal civilization. He is learning to love what he blindly hated, blurring the mission and himself.
But a reckoning is coming. The fates of billions hang in the balance. When the axe falls, Jonas must choose between his family and his species.
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A thought provoking new take on an old myth.
Transient by Zachry Wheeler follows the story of Jonas, a human spy embedded in the eternal-held city of Seattle. Eternals, blood-drinkers who in another age might have called themselves vampires, have taken control of the world and pushed humans to the brink of extinction. After years of war, the eternals have created a stable, nearly utopian society, subsisting on the blood of animals and sparking an age of egalitarian social and technological advancement. An age that the few humans who have survived will do anything to bring to an end. The humans have embedded spies, transients, among the eternals who use drugs to hide themselves and slow their aging. These transients study the eternals they hide among and search for a weakness to destroy them all. A weakness they may have found.
I enjoyed Transient very much. The story is told largely through journal entries from the main character as well as deep inside Jonas’s own conflicted mind. Jonas was three-dimensional and complicated, struggling with the anti-eternal programming of his youth and the reality of living and loving within the eternal society. Wheeler’s journal entries cover various parts of the history between the eternals and the humans they have replaced – everything from the war between them and the lawless years after the war began to the dating and social habits of the modern eternal. These journal “recons” were a delight to read and gave a great deal of depth to the setting in Transient.
I am very excited to see what comes next for Zachry Wheeler and recommend Transient to all lovers of urban fantasy, YA dystopias, and preternatural suspense.
Love this series… Love the characters (Doren is my fave)… Especially fond of the dueling morality themes, gripping and effective…
Strong protagonist, original concept, really enjoyed this one.
I am not, repeat, NOT a fan of vampire fiction but decided to give this one a try due to its futuristic techno vibe. 99 cents? Why not. Glad I did because Transient does not pull its punches. This is a jarring ride through a grim future, for humans at least. Great read, just got the next book.
This was a very interesting and modernized take on vampires. I also enjoyed the noir style writing, gave it a brooding cyberpunk feel.
In Transient we are introduced to Jonas, a human living among vampires (now given the sanitized label of eternals) in the far future. Jonas lives among the eternals as a spy, helping the remaining humans to survive and hopefully find a way to defeat their mortal enemy. It’s not easy for Jonas and the other transients as they must take drugs to hide their presence among the undead and must partake in all the rituals of eternal society – including drinking blood. But the eternals have made it easy, mass-producing the process of drinking blood for survival in private feeding rooms.
The world-building that Zachary does for Transient is just amazing. Set in a Seattle of the far-future, with a race of people who cannot go out in daylight or they will die, he has created a fun and exciting world to explore with underground “skyscrapers” and a solar-powered economy (a bit ironic for vampires). In fact, the world of the eternals is pretty much a utopia where everybody works (less than 30 hours a week), gets universal health care (not that eternals are prone to disease or illness), get lots of time off, have a great economy, and have ended wars, want, or need. There is no poverty and everybody gets along. It’s a perfect utopia, except that the remaining humans cling to the notion that the eternals are the spawn of the devil, an abomination unto God, and therefore must be destroyed. This leads to the major conflict for Jonas as he has started to disobey the rules laid down for transients – like don’t fall in love. As Jonas struggles with his inner conflict he is given a new assignment by his human handlers – a way that will kill off all of the eternals. Is Jonas up to committing mass genocide to save the human race?
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to others. It provides a fun and unique twist on the vampire story with a compelling character in Jonas. My one quibble (and it’s a minor one) is that Jonas’ story is told in the first person, so the people around Jonas, from his eternal friends, to his human handlers and family, get only a cursory treatment. They are not necessarily backdrop, but they do not come across as fully realized either. Maybe that’s just the hazard of telling the story in the first person, but with such a wonderfully created world I wanted to know more about the people who live in it, and having an eternal POV would have been nice. But don’t let my quibble deter you from picking up this book, it is well worth the read and I hope that Zachary is working on another book featuring Jonas and this world.
Slow boring. Not well written. The premise of the story is interesting once you figure out what they are talking about. I did not enjoy this book.
Why do you have to use filthy language when clean conversation from your characters will serve your purpose just as well? To be fair, I only read the first few pages of your book, which started off keening my interest. Then, you threw in ugly speech and I immediately deleted your book from my Kindle device. My advice would be to consider your audience. Many of us love the genre that you are presenting, but many of us also object to having to read dialogue containing gutter language.
This book had so many grammatical errors in the first few pages that I found it unreadable. It is completely insulting to the reader when words are missing from the sentence since any grammar check (including the free ones) could catch that type of mistake. So, clearly, no one bothered to check the grammar before publishing this book.