'A well-polished sci-fi saga with a 'classic' feel to it. A RED RIBBON WINNER and highly recommended!' The Wishing Shelf Book Awards

Commander Irene Slade, the renowned "Moonchild" from Earth's lunar colony, Venus expedition member and Mars colony commander, is a woman shaped by profound personal loss. She has nothing tying her to Sol any more, so accepts the command of a new venture exploiting the newly developed, soliton-based, FTL technology: a two-year mission to AC4. This Earth-like planet in the Alpha Centauri cluster, with its nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, vast oceans, and verdant forests, promises the first signs of life outside our solar system.

But hope quickly turns to peril. Don Lindsay, starship navigator and pilot of the shuttle Encounter, meets two indigenous forms of animal life: the rahpa savagely territorial, the yolti showing startling intelligence, and revealing their name for their world to be Klandor. Don's unsanctioned first contact program plunges the mission into tragedy, threatening humanity's entire prospect of colonization.

The colonization committee keeps some of the details secret, and suppresses the survey team's report on the yolti's intelligence. When 23-year-old librarian Lorraine Firth and her 16-year-old sister Glennis apply to join the colonization mission and, to the surprise of the selection committee, Irene uses her override authority to ensure the girls are accepted. On the planet Lorraine becomes surprisingly influential as they endeavour to tame the new planet, prepare for the main wave of colonists, and learn to live with the rahpa and the yolti.

Glennis learns to pilot the Endeavour, and becomes the indispensable go-to person for everything from the yolti culture to flying the notorious cyclone alley between the two colony sites. Due to a shuttle disaster, it is the jungle yolti that meet the colonists when Enterprise brings the Fairleigh colonists to the new northern settlement. Their self-appointed leader is gung-ho engineer Yuri Gregovich, who feels insulted by them assigning a 'child pilot' to ferry him to Lakeside, where his enterprise and ambition quickly create conflict with environmentally focused council. And somehow the Firths seem to come up as the answer to every question or need, and an unlikely alliance starts to emerge. Glennis, now known as Lennis, can't wait to get her hands on the new generation of shuttles the colony ships has brought, and finds herself training Yuri and the Fairleigh pilots to handle the Enterprise class shuttles in the dangerous weather conditions that Klandor can bring, while Yuri seeks every possible way of bringing the yolti into his plans to tame Klandor.

Klandor Rising brings together the first three novels of the Klandor Series—Klandor Encounter (Book 1), Klandor Endeavour (Book 2), and Klandor Enterprise (Book 3)—into one comprehensive volume. Each novel, named for a shuttle, reflects a different stage of the exploration and colonization of Klandor and their relationship with the enigmatic yolti. The collection also includes Klandor Enigma (Book 4), a new novelette.

While all stories are set in the same rich universe, they focus on three separate generations and can be enjoyed independently. Klandor Enigma notably occurs a generation after the events of Enterprise, delving into a chilling mystery: a series of deaths of eleven-year-old children born in Lennisvale, while Lorraine and Lennis Firth's aunt was a member of the original survey mission in Encounter—and her presence is still felt on the new planet.

Discover the challenges of exploring and colonizing the alien world of Klandor—where the best and worst of humanity's ambitions clash as we try to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Praise for Klandro Rising

"All in all, a bit of a gem!" A ‘Wishing Shelf’ Book Review