Books for Company: Guest Post - John Barlow + Giveaway

Please welcome John Barlow to Books for Company!

I was very happy when John agreed to a guest post! I really want to read Islanders myself but due to having lack of reading time and over 400 books to read I am unable to read it YET! I hope to in the future. It sounds so good! Make sure you check it out.

Thanks John!

Giveaway towards the end.

The Perfect Group for a Quest by John Barlow

Today my new YA novel, ISLANDERS, is published. It’s an adventure about a boy’s quest to find his father. ISLANDERS is set in a post-war landscape where germ warfare has destroyed much of the natural order, leaving a weird world of genetic mutants. There are still some humans around, but they’re not doing very well, worn down by industrial slavery and a deteriorating environment.
Enter our hero. Ben Brewer has lived all his life on an island, with his mother and a community of people who escaped the ravages of war in search of somewhere safe. Ben’s father was a war hero, but he died before Ben was born, fighting for freedom (a cause which was lost). Ben has never met him.
When a young messenger arrives on the Island saying that Ben’s father is not dead, Ben decides to go and find him. Perhaps his dad is in danger. But Ben is 13, and his dad has been gone all those years. Why did he never come back? If he is alive, why has he never in fact come home to see his own son?
Ben sets out to look for his dad, but in some ways he’s really looking for the truth about his dad. By extension he’s trying to find out the truth about the war, and why he had to grow up on a miserable island. He’s really on a quest to learn about the world in which he was born, and to find a way to make it better.
Sometimes a hero goes it alone, pitting himself against whatever challenges he might encounter. But with ISLANDERS I wanted Ben to have some company. For one thing, there’s a whole dystopian world to try and understand. It’s just too much for one person. He needs back-up, and a bunch of people with different but essential skills (fist-fighting, mathematical logic, mutant emu-riding...).
Ben himself is the unifying force, the person on whom our eyes most naturally fall. But around him I tried to assemble people with contrasting personalities. His best friend, Coby, is nervous and scared. His cowardice is important, though, because in the frightening dystopian world in which they travel, being scared is a perfectly natural reaction. Also, when Coby does show courage, it is in service of the whole group. Coby’s sister, Silver, is the brainy one. But her knowledge and intelligence are necessary; she is called upon again and again to supply the group with solutions or explanations, a means of guiding their progress. She also carries the compass and keeps track of the way they’ve come. She represents reason in a world gone mad.
Finally, the muscle. There are two twins (nicknames Bad and Worse) in the group. They are war orphans and nobody on the Island likes them, because they’re violent, rude and malicious. But as the story develops, they turn out to be tough and loyal, and good fun to have around. There’s quite a bit of violence in the book (fist fights mainly, no guns) and it’s mostly Bad and Worse who are guilty. They are immensely strong and fearless, but it’s not until they team up with the others, especially Silver and her capacity to use reason, that they really shine. Indeed, throughout the plot we see how each character comes to appreciate the particular role of the others. By the end it’s a pretty effective bunch, although they still agree about almost nothing.
Anyway, that’s ISLANDERS. I enjoyed putting the team together, and setting them all free in a strange and frightening world. I think that was the key to writing the novel: once I had the team, I could almost sit back and watch them as they made their way through the adventure. I enjoyed writing it tremendously. I hope people enjoy reading it.

Giveaway

John has kindly offered three e book copies of Islanders to three lucky winners!

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Buy Islanders

Amazon (UK/USA)