Friday, November 9, 2012

Book Tour ~ Giveaway ~ Haven 6 by Aubrie Dione



Welcome to my stop on the Haven 6 book tour. Brought to you by Bewitching Book Tours. Here you can read a synopsis of the book, First Chapter ,Giveaway, and book trailer! I also have a bio of author Aubrie Dione.

Haven 6
New Dawn Series Book #4
Aubrie Dionne

Genre: Science Fiction Romance
Publisher: Entangled Publishing

ISBN-10: 1937044858  
ISBN-13: 978-1937044855

Number of pages: 326
Word Count: 85K
Cover Artist: Heather Howland
 Goodreads   
 Book Description:

A product of an illegal pairing, Eridani is the only woman without a lifemate aboard the colonization ship, the Heritage, and she is determined her less than perfect DNA will not get in the way of finding love. As the ship nears it's final destination of Haven 6 after five hundred years of travel, images of the surface show evidence of intelligent life on a planet that's supposed to be uninhabited. Commander Grier assigns Eri to the exploratory team to spy on the alien society and return with information on how to defeat them.
When Eri's team lands, tribes of humans attack and Eri is saved by Striver, the descendant of a colonist and a pirate from Old Earth's colonization efforts in other parts of the galaxy. Striver helps Eri rescue her team and they are drawn to each other despite their different allegiances. While Striver battles with trusting Eri, Eri must decide whether to warn him and his people about the commander's intentions, or follow orders and complete her mission.


About the Author:

Aubrie grew up watching the original Star Wars movies over and over again until she could recite and reenact every single scene in her backyard. She also loved The Goonies, Star Trek the Next Generation-favorite character was Data by far-, and Indiana Jones. But, her all time favorite movie was The Last Unicorn. She still wonders why the unicorn decided to change back to a unicorn in the end.
Aubrie wrote in her junior high yearbook that she wanted to be "A concert flutist" when she grew up. When she made that happen, she decided one career was not enough and embarked as a fantasy, sci fi author. Two careers seem to keep her busy. For now.
Her writings have appeared in Mindflights, Niteblade, Silver Blade, Emerald Tales, Hazard Cat, Moon Drenched Fables, A Fly in Amber, and Aurora Wolf. Her books are published by Entangled Publishing, Lyrical Press, and Gypsy Shadow Publishing. She recently signed her YA sci fi novel with Inkspell Publishing titled: Colonization: Paradise Reclaimed, which will release in October 2012.

Twitter: @authoraubrie





My review:

I really, really loved this book. I had read some of the previous ones (Paradise 21 for instance) and loved this one, as we get to see what became of Striker and crew from that first book.  I am sure I missed something, as I only have read Paradise 21 and part of Tundra 37 as of writing this (and didn’t see much connection between the books, until this one).  I mean, it seems many generations have passed, as they were the founders of Refuge (they had found a wormhole to this planet in the first book and brought the eggs of the winged people alien race with them, on the alien ship Striker had found, called Guardians now) So in this book, one of the colony ships finally arrive, The Heritage, they took the long route, not knowing of this wormhole, hundreds of years.

Anyway, this story is about Eri who we first see getting denied again, for the matchmaking for a lifemate, as she was born from “love” and not computer picked mates, based on DNA.  (her parents were rebels, and fell in love, and had her) Then she gets sent on a mission to see what is on this planet, as they were under the impression that this planet they call Haven 6 was uninhibited by intelligent life, but then they got photos back from a scout drone of thatched roof buildings, and an arrow shot the camera, and then it went black. She goes to this planet with Litus, her sister Aquaria’s, new lifemate and 8 other colonist.

Striver is the leader of the colony behind the wall they built on Refuge (what they call it) and then there is the Lawless, the outcasts, which refuse to abide by the rules made by the founders and the Guardian race. They choose to live without technology, and have the original alien ship hidden. It contains their histories and is the only reason they keep it, and not destroy it. The Lawless are always trying to get their hands on that technology.

Then of course things get exciting as Eri and her crew end up landing near the Lawless territory, and Striver and his crew take off to try to protect them from the savages of the Lawless, who would want to kill the invaders (colonist) and steal their technology. Striver saves Eri’s life and things get interesting form there. This all happens within the first 25% of the book, and just gets more exciting from that point on. Eri must struggle with the knowledge that the commander of her colonist ship plans to take over this planet and she feels this is wrong, so she needs to decide to warn Striver or not.

I was sucked in right away, I have really enjoyed these books, they are just right, not too much far-fetched aliens and stuff, you know, not too much like star trek, or something, lol. I love the love interest in this one. Striver is so hot too, lol.

I give it 5 out of 5 stars. I highly recommend to anyone who likes paranormal or sci-fi books.


I received this book for my honest review for the book tour for Bewitching Book Tours.

Did you like my review? If so, I would love you to mark it as helpful at Amazon. Here. Or like at Goodreads if you want here. Thanks


Haven 6 (New Dawn #5) By Aubrie Dionne Excerpt

Chapter One

Unexpected Calling

Matching request  denied.
Eri  stared  at  the  response on  her  computer screen  as reality prickled  the  hairs  on her  arms  and  then  sunk  like a bomb  in her stomach.
alea iacta  est. the die  has been  cast.
She thought of all the  ways to express  disappointment in the languages of Old Earth: apogoitefsi in Greek, rozczarowanie in Polish, die Enttäuschung in German, and désappointement in French.  Such useless knowledge. Her linguist mind teemed with words, making her the most archaic and impractical colonist on the Heritage.
Not  only  was her  job  obsolete, but  now  she’d never  have  a computer-designated match.
An   oscillating   holo picture  of  her   parents’   faces  drew   her attention. She refused  to blame  them  for her  predicament. As an illegal  DNA  crossing  resulting  from  an  unrecognized pairing,  she knew the computer would never  consider  her DNA  acceptable for

lifemate  pairing, especially at her ripe age of twenty-five. Her profile had too many question marks, plus a few propensities for disease.
She should have known from the start. She shouldn’t have persevered, pressing  the  Matchmaker for  a decision  she  couldn’t make  because  of the rules. How could the Matchmaker argue  with a system that  had worked  successfully for hundreds of years?  Eri’s determination raised her own hopes only to crash them down in the end each time she sent a request.
Well, this was the last time, wasn’t it? She clicked off the screen. All of the men her age were taken, and the age discrepancy between her and the graduating class was scandalous. She wiped her eyes. If I can’t work within the system, then there must be some way to beat it by hacking into the matching program or changing my genetic report. Would the Matchmaker catch it? How embarrassing would that be? What would the punishment be?
Her computer alarm beeped. Fifteen hundred.
Aquaria’s pairing ceremony.
Damn!
She scrambled through her desk, overturning broken light sticks and  soybean  wafer  wrappers to  find something to  tame  her  hair. Using the black computer screen as a mirror, she clipped her frizzy strawberry curls with tiny plastic clips. How could she let so many hours slip away?
Daydreaming about having her own pairing, that’s how. She shot up from her desk and pulled her arms through the ceremonial blazer of her uniform. The Heritage’s coat of arms badge decorated her left breast  pocket.  Pressing  the  portal  panel,  she watched  the  particles dissolve like her dreams.
The  corridors lay as empty  and  silent  as a barren world. The
Guide dictated that all colonists must attend each pairing ceremony.
Eri shook  her head. She had lamented her own lack of pairing

to the point  of disobedience. Her  boots  clunked  on the chrome  as she  rushed  through the  clear  glass corridor connecting her  small bubble of offices to the belly of the ship. Stars sparkled like pinpricks all around her. One point in particular glittered like a giant diamond, outshining all the others. The sparkle wasn’t a star.
Haven 6.
Despite her tardiness, she stopped halfway down the walkway to trace  Haven’s circumference with her finger on the glass. Yesterday, it was the size of her fingernail, but now it glowed beyond her entire fingerprint.
Soon we’ll all leave this ship behind.
A wave of melancholy tinged with hope washed over her. Maybe the computer would reassign her a more meaningful job. With plenty of resources, and couples  allowed  to have as many children  as they wanted,  maybe  Commander Grier  would deem  the pairing  system obsolete. Maybe.
Eri wanted to stay and fantasize, but she’d  already wasted  enough time. Would  her sister notice  if she rushed  in ten minutes  late with puffy  skin  around her  eyes?  Probably. Aquaria noted  every  new freckle on her arm, as if skin cancer were a problem when they had no sun.  It will be a problem soon enough on Haven, though.
She  tore  herself  away from  her  future  and  entered the  main corridor connecting to the ceremonial viewing deck.
Rows  of  uniformed colonists  sat  on  either  side  of  the  aisle. Aquaria stood  at the podium,  holding  hands  with Litus Muller, her perfectly  chosen  lifemate. She reminded Eri of the ancient beauties in her translation texts. A lacy ceremonial gown that Eri would never get to wear flowed to the last steps of the stage. Aquaria’s long black hair shone dark as deep space and her skin glowed in the simulated candlelight. While Aquaria inherited their mom’s loveliness, Eri had her dad’s Irish heritage, and with that, his wayward radish-colored hair and blushing, freckled  skin. If it wasn’t for the infamy of the scandal, no one would know they were half sisters.
She spotted a vacant  seat  in the  last row and  tiptoed over  as Aquaria and Litus recited  their vows. Eri switched the sound off the locator  embedded in her arm. The thought of pressing  a button by accident, causing a shrieking  alarm to go off, made her always check twice.
“I pledge my loyalty to you and the Guide…” Aquaria kept her gaze on the podium, as if straining to remember her lines.
“I’ll uphold  all customs…”  Litus’s voice  rang  out,  strong  and certain.
Yada, yada. Eri  blocked  their  words  and  focused  on the  pair. Aquaria’s mysterious blue eyes contrasted with Litus’s perfect  curls of blond hair. They were two opposites, like a moon and a sun, and yet they complemented each other.
Eri  shifted  as they  recited  their  final vows. The  congregation applauded, a roar  of sound changing  the solemn atmosphere of the room. People  stood  from their  seats as if Commander Grier’d  had them  glued  there  all day. Ushers  carried  platters of food  from  a dwindling  biodome harvest. The sweet scent of fresh fruit filled the room. Eri slipped through the spaces in between groups to grab an apple  and congratulate Aquaria before  the receiving  line grew too long.
“Eri! There you are! I kept looking for you in the crowd.” Aquaria threw her  arms around her  and squeezed. “I’m sorry, Aquaria, I came in late and had to sit in the back.”
“What’s  wrong?” Her sister’s eyes shone so bright, Eri saw her disheveled appearance reflected in them.
“Nothing. I wanted to congratulate you.”
“Nonsense.” Aquaria waved  away the  ceremony like  she  was shaking off a chore. “Something happened. Are you sick?”
“No. You should be with Litus. I’ll tell you about it later.” Shining the apple  with her finger, Eri suppressed a wave of guilt. Her sister shouldn’t spend her reception worrying.
Aquaria took her hand in a viselike grip, her lacy sleeve tickling Eri’s arm. “I’m not going anywhere.” Aquaria tugged her away from the crowd, and they ducked behind the podium.“Not until you tell me what’s got you so upset.”
The scent of artificial lilac tickled  Eri’s nose as they stood  over the  vent. She struggled  to keep  her  composure. She was the  older sister by two years, after all. Swallowing a lump in her throat, she met her sister’s penetrating gaze.
“The Matchmaker turned down my pairing request again.” Aquaria’s mouth fell open. “That’s not nothing. That’s everything you’ve been  working  for. And  to  have  to  come  to  my ceremony afterward…Eri, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m worrying you on what should be the happiest day of your life.”
“Litus is important, yes, but so are you. My relationship with him doesn’t diminish what we have, and it never will.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “And  you deserve to have a lifemate just like everyone else, especially if you want one. I don’t care what the computers say.”
Eri stepped back, shooting a look across the room to make sure no one was eavesdropping. She’d never heard her sister talk blasphemy against the Guide.
The locator on her  arm vibrated, and she checked  the sender, relieved  to have  something else to look  at other  than  her  sister’s overly compassionate face.
A single message scrolled across the miniscreen, report to  the  Main  control  deck  immediately.
Eri almost choked when she saw the sender. Aquaria grabbed her arm. “What is it?”
Eri began to shake,  and  her  knees  weakened. “It’s a message from Commander Grier. She wants me to report to her. Now.”

Because I showed up late? Impossible. How could the commander oversee  every operation on the ship and keep track of each colonist at all times? Commander Grier  had never acknowledged her in any way, not even a stray flick from her computerized eyes.
She’s just a brain connected  to the mainframe. Maybe  she has nothing better to do.
Aquaria blinked in surprise.“Well, you’d better go now, you lucky star. It’s not every generation someone of our status gets to meet the commander.”
Wouldn’t Aquaria rather enjoy her pairing ceremony than meet the commander?
Eri  shook  the  thought off and  gave her  a quick  hug. “You’re right.”

The corridors to the main control  deck  stretched before  Eri like a forbidden land. No one  passed  beyond  the  row of guards  without sufficient  clearance. People  worshipped the  commander like some demigod  because  she  was  the  last  of  the  Earth generation. She couldn’t have all her devoted followers kneeling  at the main control deck’s portal.
Eri would much rather sneak back to her office and read ancient Greek plays. But in a ship surrounded by deep space, she had nowhere to hide. No one disobeyed the commander.
A  guard  three  heads  taller  than  her  scanned  her  locator  and allowed  her through with a narrowing of his eyes. Eri returned his stare  as  she  passed.  After   the  denied   matching   request, having someone question her importance churned her stomach.
The  portal  to  the  main  control  deck  fell away  like  a million swirling stars, and she stepped onto a viewing platform that spanned the entire  length  of the front  hull. Galaxies  stretched out in smears of cosmic dust, and nebulas swirled in bright reds and blues. Haven 6 glittered at the center, like a diamond stuck on a painter’s easel.
A giant screen lowered  in front of her. The pixels flashed to life, and the commander’s sharp  features and bright  green  gaze studied her.
Eri wasn’t fooled. The image was only a recreation of who Ursula Grier  used to be. In reality, the commander’s brain  floated  in pink embryonic liquid in a locked glass tank behind the screen.
She  bowed  before  the  pixels. “Eridani Smith  at  your  service, Commander.”
“Excellent.” The  commander’s eyes moved  from  Eri’s scuffed space boots to the clips in her raging hair. Did her cheek twitch, or did the pixels just flash?
“I need to know the extent of your dedication to our mission on
Haven 6.”
Eri   swallowed   hard.  Was  the   commander  questioning  her because of one tardiness in all her history? Stick to the truth, and your voice will come out strong. “I’m looking forward to landing more than anything.”
The commander’s eyes narrowed. Eri resisted the urge to squirm, feeling like an insignificant fly. Can she see my intentions to hack into the matching system? My continual cursing of my archaic job?
The image of the commander’s face grew so large, her eyes took up the whole screen.“Would you do anything to ensure the survival of the mission?” Her voice boomed, echoing over the glass sight panel.
The  commander’s gaze simmered, searing  Eri’s mind, and  Eri straightened up, standing  as tall as a five foot two woman could. She thought of Aquaria, her parents, even Litus. “Of course.”
The commander’s face returned to its normal size. “Good. I have a mission for you.”
Eri dropped her jaw, and then  snapped it back up. Did Ursula
Grier want to learn French?
“I know this comes as a shock. Sit down before you pass out. Let me explain.”
The commander flicked her gaze to a row of stools against  the sight  panel.  Not  wanting  to  seem  insubordinate, Eri  nodded and climbed onto the nearest one, pushing off a film of dust.
Not many guests for the commander.
Eri’s short legs dangled, and she tensed her muscles to hold them in place. Now was not the time to look childish.
The commander’s image fizzled for a second, then blinked  back on. “We  reach  Haven  6 in a week. As  you know, scouts  sent  out hundreds of years  before  we left Earth reported it uninhabited by humanoids or any other intelligent species.”
Eri nodded.
“Last night we reestablished contact with the scout droid sent to Haven  6 hundreds of years ago. Using its interface, we rebooted the satellite orbiting the planet. The satellite picked up images that would suggest the initial scout readings were wrong.”
The commander’s lips set in a grim line of disapproval before her face disappeared. Blurred images of a forest with brown thatched roofs poking out from the canopy filled the screen.
Eri leaned forward, eyes wide. Intelligent life? Not one scout ship had ever picked up even a sliver of proof  they weren’t alone  in the universe.  Since the space pirates  severed  all communication among the colony ships, there was no way to tell what any other colony ship had  encountered. The  commander’s image  reappeared before  Eri could get a better look at the alien settlement. “Which  leads me to alter my plans. I’ve appointed you part of an advance mission before colonization. A research ground crew.”
Eri steeled her knees so she wouldn’t collapse off the stool into a puddle of mush on the floor. “Why me?”
“You’re our  only  linguist,  Ms. Smith. You  must  decipher the alien language and root yourself into their society. Only then can you estimate their abilities and any imminent threat to us.”

Did the commander choose her because she was expendable, or truly because  of her linguist skills? She shot down the first thought and continued to listen.Maybe for once I’ll be important.
“We’re not going to land on a planet that may endanger the lives of the people  on this mission. You, along with a small team, are to befriend whatever creatures reside on Haven 6.”
Eri’s heart  almost  burst  with pride. “You  want me to represent the Heritage?”
Grier’s  lips  tightened like  she  was  mildly  annoyed. “This  is precisely why all colony ships have at least one linguist—in case they encounter extraterrestrial life.”
“Of  course.  I-I knew  that.”  Eri  stuttered over  her  words. “It’s just—I’m so shocked. I’m honored and humbled you’ve chosen—”
Grier  interrupted her. “Report all of your  observations to me directly. I need to know their  intelligence level, their  advancements, and any weaponry these aliens possess.”
Eri saluted. “Yes sir, Commander.”

The mention of weapons  did raise a red flag, but Eri squashed the concern  down.  The  commander was  just  protecting all  of  them, making sure no one from the ship would get hurt. Besides, this was the first time she’d been assigned a task that would make a difference, and she wanted to prove herself and make the commander proud  at the same time. By the time I’m done, they’ll be begging to promote me. Then, I’ll have my choice of a lifemate…gorgeous eyes, chestnut hair… someone to talk to, grow old with…
The commander’s rigid voice startled Eri out of her daydream. “Report to the briefing at seventeen hundred in Bay 6. Don’t repeat this to anyone  without  code nine clearance. Project  reference: Delta Slip.”
Eri  bowed,  her  curls  falling  on  either   side  of  her  face.  She snapped up  and  turned on  her  heel,  thinking  of all the  language syntax refreshing she had to do.



This tour is brought to you by Bewitching Book Tours. Click HERE to see the tour page of Haven 6, maybe sign up to be a host!

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