Title: The Fledgling’s Inferno
Author: Tamar Anolic
Genre: Military science fiction
Book Blurb:
An old legend. A new type of warrior.
Eighteen-year-old Katie McMann enrolls in Norwich University’s Corps of Cadets to follow a family tradition of service. Everything becomes complicated when her training exercises reveal she has a special power: she can fly.
To her shock, Katie becomes the first woman to be diagnosed with the rare MH1 gene, a recessive trait that runs in military families and has recently been scientifically proven after more than a century of being urban legend. Former Marine and current Citadel cadet Francis William Montgomery IV also has the gene and special powers of his own- he can shoot fire with his hands and is immune to bullets. But Montgomery is aligned with the Pentagon’s secretive Military Genetics Control Board, led by the harsh Colonel Henry Gibson and aided by the sinister Norwich professor Tristan Hayes. All three men want to engineer the MH1 gene so that it only manifests in worthy recipients- and Katie is not in the plan. Under the tutelage of Norwich’s Cadet Colonel, Edward Coltrane, Katie must learn to harness her powers in time for the fight of her life.
Excerpt:
As their training wore on, Katie reveled in the long runs and marches. On the last day before classes began, Katie and Cassie got ready for the Dog River Run. Cassie’s jaw clenched as they raced into their fatigues and boots.
“The river’s only a mile across the campus,” Katie told her roommate. “How bad could it be?”
“The entire Corps has been saying it’s intense all week.” Cassie’s face screwed up in doubt.
“I know,” Katie said, not wanting to admit to the butterflies of nervousness that were flying around her stomach. She finished tying her hair into its low, tight bun.
A second later, the cadet officers’ voices rang through the halls of the barracks. “Let’s go, New Recruits!” they yelled. “Time for the Dog River Run! You aren’t real cadets until you’ve finished!”
Cassie groaned. “They are way too excited about this.”
Katie laughed as she pulled the door to their room open. Together, she and Cassie marched into the hallway and joined the rest of the cadets from their barracks. As they got outside, Katie squinted into the sunlight and felt the light breeze across her head and shoulders.
Up ahead was Coltrane’s tall form. As always, his shoulders were thrown back, and he marched confidently. Katie swallowed and felt her heart rate increase as the march picked up speed. Within seconds, Katie and Cassie were running in step with all of the cadets around them. “Move, move, move!” Coltrane yelled, and soon Katie was sprinting as fast as she could down the path the led to the river. Her breath came in gasps, her heart was pounding, and her leg muscles ached.
“Stop!” Coltrane suddenly yelled. “Pushups! Now! Ten of them!”
Katie dropped down to the ground and struggled through the new exercise. All around her, the cadet officers were yelling at the recruits who were having trouble finishing their pushups. Katie jumped as someone yelled in her ear. “Move, New Recruit! Now!” came the thundering voice, but Katie did not have the courage to look up to see who it was.
She finished her tenth pushup and winced, certain that her heart was about to come out of her chest. But she had no time to rest- the older cadets were already yelling for the new ones to start sprinting again. Oh my God, Katie thought. There’s no way I’m going to finish this. Then the river came into view. Almost there! Katie thought. Her spirits lifted, and she picked up the pace. We’re done! We’re done!
She had just reached the side of the river when the cadet officers began yelling again. “Into the water!” they screamed. “Move! Now!”
Katie kept moving. She gasped as the cold water rose above her boots and soaked through her fatigues.
“Pushups!” Coltrane screamed.
“Pushups?” Katie repeated. “In the water?”
“Are you deaf, New Recruit?” Coltrane yelled. “Pushups! In the water!”
Katie dove into the water, followed by the recruits around her. Her hands and feet slipped on the wet rocks in the river.
“Ten pushups! Now!” Coltrane shouted. Katie had barely gotten to number seven when the commands changed. “Sit-ups!” Coltrane squawked. “Five sets of ten!”
Katie rolled over into a sitting position and began doing her sit ups. The river’s freezing water seeped through every inch of her fatigues and onto her skin. Goosebumps sprung up on her skin even as she continued her sit ups. Within seconds, she was shivering ferociously.
Then she leapt to her feet and hurled herself onto the river bank, freezing and exhausted. To her horror, the older cadets were setting up yet another exercise, running a rope between the two biggest trees on the banks of the Dog River. Rope hangs have always scared me, Katie thought. That rope is going to break, I know it.
Katie bit her lip as she got in line behind several other new recruits. She watched as the first recruits made their way across the rope, hand over hand thirty feet in the air. Two slow recruits struggled to get across, and Katie hoped that the longer they took, the more likely it would be that the older cadets would cancel the exercise entirely.
Before Katie was ready, it was her turn to go. She climbed the first tree as high as she could and leapt up onto the rope. The recruit in front of her had now made it to the halfway point between the trees. For a second, Katie watched him sway as he struggled to maintain his position. Then she put one hand in front of the other, moving forward as fast as she could. She glanced down. Electricity ran up and down her legs as her eyes comprehended the full thirty feet between her and the ground. For a second, Katie felt like she was falling, and it took all of her self-control not to scream. She gripped the rope tighter and prayed.
When she looked back at the recruit in front of her, he had stopped moving and was just hanging there, his hands clutching the rope. “Move, idiot!” Katie yelled before she could stop herself. “You can’t just stop in the middle!”
But the recruit remained where he was. Furious, Katie began moving forward again, putting one hand in front of the other in an attempt to get him to move. She had only gotten a few feet when she saw what had made him stop: the other end of the rope, which had been tied so tightly to the other tree, had now come loose. The knot slipped and the rope began sliding towards the ground.
Katie yelled in fear. Her voice reached her ears as if she were in a long tunnel. Then the rope slipped faster. Katie’s stomach dropped, and her heart raced. The recruit in front of her began to fall, screaming as he plunged to the ground. Katie began to fall too. Her stomach lurched, but she felt like she was moving in slow motion.
Katie looked at the ground, expecting it to race towards her. Then, before she knew what she was doing, she lifted her arms. Katie took a deep breath and felt the wind beneath her feet and arms. Everything around her slowed down. Time slowed down. Katie looked around her and saw everything floating past her instead of racing. The wind moved past her ears in a quiet breeze, as if it had all the time in the world. Katie flew to the ground and landed on her feet as easily as if she were stepping off a flight of stairs.
It took her a moment to realize that she was on the ground again. When she came to her senses, Katie pressed her boots onto the ground once, then twice, before she felt the campus’ velvet grass beneath her feet. Only then did she know she was safe, and relief flowed through her body like water.
All at once, the roar of hundreds of cadets, all talking at the same time, cascaded through the air. Specific words reached Katie’s ears as the cadets swarmed around her. “What just happened?” someone asked.
Katie shook her head, stunned. Her whole body felt rooted to the ground now, and it was hard for her even to move her head back and forth.
Coltrane pushed his way through the cadets and planted himself right in front of Katie. The cadets around them moved a healthy distance away, but every single one of them was watching the impending confrontation.
Coltrane glared at Katie.
She took a step back.
Coltrane took a step forward. Now he was directly in Katie’s face again. “McMann, what the hell just happened?” he yelled.
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“The Fledgling's Inferno is an exciting and enjoyable book. The story is robust, with many turns and twists. The main character is strong and confident.” (from an Amazon review)
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Author Biography:
The Fledgling's Inferno is the first book of The Vanguard Warrior Trilogy. The second book, A Silent Evil, was published in 2023 and the last book, The Final Armada, will be published in June 2024. Tamar's first novel, The Last Battle, was military fiction and focused on a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. She has also written extensively about the Romanovs, including the novels Triumph of a Tsar, Through the Fire, The Imperial Spy. Tamar’s short story collection set in the Old West, The Lonely Spirit, has won many awards.
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