by A.K. Frailey
Reviewed by Eileen Quinn Knight, Ph.D.
The author, A.K.Frailey, is a courageous person who finds a way to stimulate her readerships thinking through science fiction. She is imaginative and yet grounded in her beliefs and presents the story in an interesting and fascinating way to all. It is readable and thoughtfully presented.
Cerulean, a Luzonian light being, prayed to an unknown God amid the swirling masses. The tips of his fingers touched steeple style as he appeared in his favorite form: a muscular middle-aged man with soulful, blue eyes and a determined chin. He sat on a dais facing a massive assembly and squared his shoulders. The crowded, domed hall decorated with statutes of long dead but never-to-be forgotten members of the Inter-Alien Alliance Committee resonated with numerous murmuring conversations. As his gaze flowed over the squirming court of very-much-alive representatives of six races, Cerulean’s mind slipped back to the love of his life, Anne Smith, whom he had buried under a blooming apple tree on Oldearth twenty-three years before.
He closed his eyes to the memory. After a deep breath, he reopened them to face the trial of another woman of interest: Justine Santana, an android and one of the most notorious weapons ever used during the Integalactic Oskilth War.
After a despairing human remnant abandoned Earth and fled to lux, Cerulean crafted a resettlement plan for Newearth, but war intervened. Now, after the last war crimes trial, he would finally be free to help humanity resettle on Newearth. But this trial must come first. After all, Justine was human too..
Newearth is a place to start over. A place to figure out sin, transgressions, how the creatures care and love each other. This book gives us a chance to re-think many of the propositions that we take for granted, this is a chance to discover anew what is needed in order to live a good life.