Are you ready for Day of Wrath, the final installment in Anna Butler’s Taking Shield series? If not, fasten your seatbelts because this is one wild ride! Bennet and Flynn are back together again, in time for the apocalyptic ending their race has been heading toward ever since they made contact with the alien Maas. If military space opera is your catnip, then this is the series for you!
I’ve been reading this series since the beginning, and I’ve long predicted that some day, someone will point to it and say, “This is the first time I read military sci-fi where the protagonists were bisexual–and that was not their sole defining characteristic. I saw myself in Flynn and Bennet.”
DAY OF WRATH
The award-winning Taking Shield series comes to its shattering conclusion in Day of Wrath.
About The Book
In less than a week, Bennet will finally return to the Shield Regiment, leaving behind the Gyrfalcon, his father, his friends… and Flynn. Promotion to Shield Major and being given command of a battle group despite the political fallout from Makepeace the year before is everything he thought he wanted. Everything he’s worked towards for the last three years. Except for leaving Flynn. He really doesn’t want to leave Flynn.
There’s time for one last flight together. A routine mission. Nothing too taxing, just savouring every moment with the best wingman, the best friend, he’s ever had. That’s the plan.
Bennet should know better than to trust to routine because what waits for them out there will change their lives forever.
Title: Day of Wrath
Author: Anna Butler
Series: Taking Shield
Necessary to read previous 4 books? Yes
Wordcount: c106,300
Category: Sci Fi, Gay mainstream.
eBook Publication Date: 28 June 2018
Paperback: Available now from Amazon or direct from Anna’s website
Publisher: Glass Hat Press © 2018
Editor: Val Selby-Wolfe at Scarlet Tie
Cover Artist: Adrian Nicholas
More information and background on the Shield Universe here
Buy Links
Day of Wrath is available at Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords and iBooks.
Link to a digital bookstore near you
Giveaway
Rafflecoptor giveaway to win one of three prizes:
– 25$ (or equivalent) Amazon gift card
– signed copy of Gyrfalcon, the first Taking Shield book
– your pick of an eBook from Anna’s back catalogue
Excerpt
A laser bolt sizzled past him. Shit! They were after him. The scanner was still suffering from Maess jamming, but Flynn could make out four Maess fighters behind him. Another laser bolt flashed past, his scanners showing it blood scarlet against the blackness of space.
Flynn’s scanner picked up Bennet rolling his Hornet to one side. A laser bolt missed him by only a few feet. Close. Too close. There had been all too many of them in the last hour. They’d done nothing but dogfight Maess fighters since they found Jilly and Bennet took back command for their share of the battle.
“Wingover loop,” Bennet ordered. “Best chance we’ve got.”
Good call. They had to get the bastards off their afterburners.
Flynn flung his Hornet up into a vertical curving quarter loop, still at top sub-light speed. He flat-turned at the top and dived down into another quarter loop to flatten out. They were facing the Maess full on, now. The abrupt change caught the Maess by surprise. The four Maess fighters scattered as Bennet and Flynn zoomed at them.
Flynn pressed his thumb onto the firing button and kept it there. Clipped one of the Maess and sent it spinning off to one side, but Bennet got another one head on as they flew through, the lucky bastard.
“Wingover to give chase,” Bennet said.
Flynn repeated the wingover, flat turning to change direction through 180 degrees again, only a few hundred yards from Bennet’s left wing. They were bloody smooth, moving as if they were connected by wires, coming up on the Maess from behind. Best pilots in Fleet, they were. Had to be. Along with Cruz who, as Flynn had expected, was out there with her pilots on Bennet’s starboard flank. He hadn’t had time to do more than greet her on their arrival and try to keep as much of an eye on her as he could spare from watching Bennet’s back.
Flynn centred a Maess fighter on the targeting screen and fired. Hit it. Damaged it enough to bleed its shields, not enough to kill it. Another second to be sure of his aim, and then again, the weapons array had the target centred. Another shot, and Flynn was suddenly flying through a miniature asteroid belt of Maess fighter parts, all bouncing off his shields and making the Hornet rattle.
Best bloody noise in the world, that.
Anna was a communications specialist for many years, working in various UK government departments on everything from marketing employment schemes to organizing conferences for 10,000 civil servants to running an internal TV service. These days, though, she is writing full time. She lives with her husband in a quiet village tucked deep in the Nottinghamshire countryside. She’s supported there by the Deputy Editor, aka Molly the cockerpoo, who is assisted by the lovely Mavis, a Yorkie-Bichon cross with a bark several sizes larger than she is but no opinion whatsoever on the placement of semi-colons.
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Thank you for hosting me today, Sarah, and for all you unstinting support as I’ve wrestled this series into submission! HUGS to you.
Your support, dammit!
Anna Butler recently posted..PUBLICATION DAY Taking Shield 05: Day of Wrath
LOL, I knew what you meant! And it’s always a privilege to be behind the scenes with your writing process!
Sarah Madison recently posted..Are you ready for the Day of Wrath? Book Release & Giveaway!