Tour of an Exovet Facility - Guest Post by Christian Schoon

Ever wanted to visit an exovet facility? Ever wished you could have a space-hound/alien-cat/amorphous-blob for a pet? (I mean, who hasn't?)

Well, you're in luck. As part of the Under Nameless Stars blog tour, I'm welcoming Christian Schoon onto the blog today. I loved space-vet-in-training Zenn Scarlett's first adventure, and now she's back again in book two! Over to Christian to tell us more about the weird and wonderful animals that an exovet may come into contact with, with a special tour of the Ciscan Cloister facilities!

(And be sure to enter the GIVEAWAY at the bottom of the post, where you can win both books as well as a Name Your Own Star Gift Package!)

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Hey and thanks to Vicky for inviting me to break into your Earther net-stream for this leg of the Under Nameless Stars blog tour extravaganza. Vicky’s stop on the tour is especially noteworthy for both Zenn and I, since the new novel is officially on sale worldwide today!

So, we’re broadcasting at your now from the com shack here at the ancient Ciscan Cloister Exoveterinarian Training Clinic on the far eastern edge of Valles Marineris, Equatorial Colonial Admin Sector. I’m sure you’ll understand if our signal drops out now and then. You know how tough it’s been to get replacement parts for radios, or pretty much anything else, here on Mars ever since the trade rift with Earth started. Hard to believe that was two decades ago. Anyway, since I’m wearing one of the Cloister’s last functioning screen-sleeve uplink units, we can head outside as we chat. That way you can get a glimpse of the clinic grounds and meet a few of the alien life forms housed here at present.

As we walk over to the main infirmary building, you’ll notice the impressive rock walls on either side of the valley. The red rock cliffs are roughly 1,500 feet high in this part of the Valles, and if you squint you can see the barometric generators mounted on the canyon walls at regular intervals. The transparent membrane of bound-ions these generators produce stretches a sort of invisible “roof” over the valley, trapping air and water vapor inside. It’s thanks to these bary-gens that the valley floors of Mars are inhabitable, and more important, farmable, for the colonists here.

As we approach the huge infirmary building, you can tell by the immense sliding doors that this building is constructed to accommodate even the largest alien animals that are cared for at the Cloister. I’ll just poke my head in and… yes… there’s Otha Scarlett, Zenn’s uncle, at work on a whalehound. The hound is a young adult male, about 80 feet long, something like an over-gown otter, but with eight legs and an elongated snout packed with very long teeth. Otha is using the infirmary’s mechanical lift to raise him high enough to bandage what looks like a bite-wound on the ‘hound’s neck. The animal likely got this while rough-housing with his pen mate, a somewhat larger female. The owners of these two magnificent animals are hoping to get a litter of whalehound pups to take back and release on their ocean-covered home planet. And while the two are a prime breeding pair, whalehounds are reluctant breeders in captivity, so their owners are upping their chances of success by bringing them here, where the Cloister exovets have the expertise needed to encourage the ‘hounds to bond and mate. Whalehounds aren’t especially aggressive, but Otha is using the sedation field dish to calm the animal down as he stitches the wound and applies a coating of derma-plast sealant. The young ‘hound should be well enough to return to his pen, and his rambunctious girlfriend, in a few days.

Leaving the infirmary, we descend a series of stone steps to the area of the grounds where various other aquatic species are housed. Here there is an assortment of pools and holding pens. At the largest pool, we peer into the early morning fog that drifts across the surface and spot Brother Hamish shoveling something into the water from a large wheelbarrow. Hamish is the Cloister’s sexton, or all-round handyman. Or, we should say, handy-bug, since he’s a Sirenian Coleopt, basically an eight-foot-tall sentient beetle. The mist on the water lifts, and a huge, serpentine head emerges, followed by the 200-foot body of a Tanduan Swamp Sloo. The great, plesiosaur-like reptile paddles over to see what Hamish is up to and, once she realizes he’s feeding her, she lowers her tubular nose to the water and begins hovering up the pellets of dried insectoid flakes that he’s dishing out. We wave a greeting to Hamish, who rattles his claws at us in reply, then move along in our tour.

Setting out across the Cloister gen-soy field, we wade through the fragrant blooms of the waist-high plants and are surprised when we suddenly feel what seems like a pair of small, clawed paws gripping one of our ankles from behind. We spin around. But there’s nothing there! Now, we feel the paws clawing at our pants pocket. A moment after that, the air before us shimmers, turns a hazy violet-and-cream color, and then resolves into the shape of what looks like a cross between an Earther raccoon and a lemur, topped by a foxish head with large, tufted lynx ears. It’s the Cloister’s resident rikkaset, Pyewhakit.

Like all rikkasets, Pyewhakit’s fur is made of refractive, crystal-impregnated keratin that allows him to bend light and become more or less invisible at will. It’s an especially effective defense mechanism. Unlike Zenn’s companion rikkaset Katie, Pyewhakit never learned to use sign language. Nonetheless, as he sits up on his haunches and trills at us, it’s clear what he wants. Fortunately, we’ve brought along a handful of dried cat food pellets, which is what he smelled in our pocket. We offer him this, and he gives us a polite lick on our hand before he takes the food in his dexterous front paws and delicately consumes the crunchy morsels.

With Pye trotting along beside us, we reach what Zenn likes to call the Cloister’s “Rogue’s Gallery” of cages, pens and fenced paddocks. Here, a wide variety of alien patients and other long-term “guests” reside. The first large cage seems to be empty, its floor covered by a dense layer of dried leaves, branches and rocks.  I rattle the heavy chain-link fencing and stand back, as the cage’s occupant explodes up out its hiding place, throwing a rain of leafy debris and dust into the air. Pyewhakit fluffs his fur and promptly vanishes from sight. He’s wise to do so. The creature we’ve disturbed is a Sirenian bloodcarn – a thirty-foot, predatory centipede with a head section resembling an immense tarantula. It rears up, hissing as it lifts its bright orange body and hundreds of short, undulating feet up toward the roof of its enclosure. The bloodcarn was purchased from an illegal animal poacher at the black market in New Zubrin. Its owner bought it when it was a barely out of the larval stage, a mere three feet long. The misguided owner thought it would make him look cool to possess such a creature. But as it grew, he  realized he wasn’t prepared to care for a creature as big and vicious as an adult bloodcarn, so he abandoned the animal in a remote canyon, where naturally it came into conflict with the local settlers. After it was re-captured by the authorities, it was brought to the Cloister, where it will now have to live out its life in captivity. It’s a sad story, but people simply seem unable to learn the lesson that some animals do not make good pets and should be left in the wild where they belong. We don’t linger at the bloodcarn’s cage, but move on. After we’ve gone a safe distance, Pye allows himself to become visible again beside us.

We stroll on, passing by the enclosure of a pack of Procyoni yotes – buffalo-sized, hyena-like           scavengers with massive, bone-crushing jaws – then stop to listen to the nesting song of a pair of Akanthan axebill warblers, as the big, ostrich-like birds serenade each other with intricate harmonies that rise and fall as they bob their heads and shake their enormous, red-and-yellow-striped bills in time to the music.

Finally, we loop all the way around to the ruins of the old chapel building, the tiles of its collapsed roof littering the site where it once stood, the huge sandstone blocks of its fallen walls lying in disarray like great dominoes strewn by some giant hand. It was here that Zenn had a truly extraordinary encounter with a young sunkiller being treated at the Cloister. For those unfamiliar, the Greater Kiran Sunkiller is a creature that grows to have a 1,500 foot wingspan, drifting on the air currents of its homeworld like a colossal, two-headed pterodactyl. A birth defect in this particular sunkiller’s wings prevented it from regulating its altitude, and it was brought to be operated on at the Cloister. Unfortunately, just as it was about to be… oh… well, that’s actually quite a long story and we seem to be out of time, as the transmission window for this broadcast is closing. Something to do with upper atmospheric disturbances.

So, it’s time for me to say good-bye. Thanks again to Vicky for letting me give you all this brief tour of the Ciscan facility. And don’t forget to enter the blog tour contest and answer her question about Under Nameless Stars. I mean, really, what Earther wouldn’t want to win free books and a chance to Name Their Own Star?  Signing off from Mars, this is Brother Schoon and the other humans, Alien Sentients and animal guests here at the Ciscan Cloister. Cheers!

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Thanks Christian! I still really want my own rikkaset...

On to the GIVEAWAY!

To celebrate the publication of Under Nameless Stars, Strange Chemistry is running an exciting competition with a different question at every stop on the tour! You can find out who else is on the tour here.

And you can find out the answers to all the questions by reading this extract of Under Nameless Stars:

Read an Extract:

Read and Share via Issuu.com


So, here is my question:

15. In the opening scene, when Zenn comes to, she's sharing the cage-crate with what other animal (besides Katie and Liam...)?
a. A bloodcarn
b. An indra
c. A sandhog
d. A skirni

Good luck! :-D


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Zenn Scarlett - Book Review

Zenn Scarlett
by Christian Schoon

When you're studying to be exoveterinarian specializing in exotic, alien life forms, school... is a different kind of animal.

Zenn Scarlett is a resourceful, determined 17-year-old girl working hard to make it through her novice year of exovet training. That means she's learning to care for alien creatures that are mostly large, generally dangerous and profoundly fascinating. Zenn’s all-important end-of-term tests at the Ciscan Cloister Exovet Clinic on Mars are coming up, and she's feeling confident of acing the exams. But when a series of inexplicable animal escapes and other disturbing events hit the school, Zenn finds herself being blamed for the problems. As if this isn't enough to deal with, her absent father has abruptly stopped communicating with her; Liam Tucker, a local towner boy, is acting unusually, annoyingly friendly; and, strangest of all: Zenn is worried she's started sharing the thoughts of the creatures around her. Which is impossible, of course. Nonetheless, she can't deny what she's feeling.

Now, with the help of Liam and Hamish, an eight-foot sentient insectoid also training at the clinic, Zenn must learn what's happened to her father, solve the mystery of who, if anyone, is sabotaging the cloister, and determine if she's actually sensing the consciousness of her alien patients... or just losing her mind. All without failing her novice year... (synopsis from Goodreads)

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This is an interesting book to review, as it had many high points but also quite a few small lows for me. Because of this, the review might seem as though it’s leaning towards the negative, but it’s important to establish first that I actually really loved this book. It held my interest all the way through, and despite some problems I found it a fascinating and well-executed idea. I’m definitely looking forward to more books set in this universe.

So, first off, this isn’t really a story so much as a collection of episodes, like one of those TV series that follows around the local country doctor or vet. Which is funny, because this book actually is about a vet. Or rather, about exo-vets, a clinic on Mars that cares for and treats alien animals. I know, what a fantastic concept, right? The book follows Zenn Scarlett, a young exo-vet in training, as she goes through her duties at the cloister (clinic), attempts to pass her tests, and treats all kinds of weird and wonderful creatures. Almost all children want to be a vet at some point when they’re growing up so that they can work with animals, and I can really see this appealing to a younger reader. The characters, story and themes also seemed suited to the younger YA reader. Zenn can be rather naive, and a lot of the moral messages are stated very simply, repeated often, and pushed quite heavily.

This can get a little frustrating at points, as I do in fact agree with the main message, but also felt very sympathetic towards the ‘towners’. After all, the exo-vet cloister is keeping some animals that would kill humans if they were to escape, despite Zenn’s protestations otherwise. In fact, there is an incident that kinda revolves around this very point. Clearly hostility and sabotage are not the answers, but at the same time, the cloister could reach out a little better to the locals, as Otha himself realises later in the book. I felt like there was some subtlety missing from the moral messages and particularly from the reactions of the characters (particularly at the end – would this one incident be enough to overcome so much fear and suspicion?).

The book is mainly made up of episodes involving the treatment or care of different creatures, and in a sense this is quite repetitive. The animals are interesting, but many of them are similar (a lot seem to be giant versions or mixes of Earth animals), and I had hoped for a few really alien aliens. There is a mystery tying the whole thing together – who is trying to sabotage the clinic and why? – and a threat to the cloister in the upcoming council’s vote. This is kept in the background until near the end, and the larger mysteries of the novel – Zenn’s mother, Zenn’s father, the Indra incidents, Zenn’s weird mind communication with animals – are all left for future books to explore. This is a little disappointing, as the greater story doesn’t really kick in until very close to the end, meaning that the pace suddenly picks up and the drama really gets going, and then... it ends.

However, although this sounds like a major flaw, it actually really isn’t. I enjoyed this story a lot, simply following Zenn around and learning about all the animals. This first book could be seen almost entirely as a worldbuilding book, setting the scene for later novels, and yet, the worldbuilding is so good that it doesn’t matter at all. The atmosphere and setting are perfect; Mars really feels like a backroads, almost cowboy-ish world, and the societies and people felt so real. There are hints about what’s happening on Earth, and hints about other worlds and cultures beyond Mars, and a fantastic solution to FTL travel that involves alien animals, which is extremely appropriate to the story. This isn’t just a story about space vets, which is itself an interesting enough idea; it’s clearly a well thought-out universe in which exo-vets are actually completely vital, due to the method of space travel employed. This is really well done.

The characters themselves are largely good too, though Liam is somewhat bland and Zenn can be a little whiny at times and preachy at others. I also think Zenn must have flunked her dice roll when it came to assigning wisdom. High intelligence, low common sense. Most readers will probably see who has been sabotaging the cloister very early on, and then begin to second guess because it’s just so obvious. However, Zenn is mostly a very likeable and sympathetic character, and many of the side-characters, such as the sheriff and Vic, are fantastic. Hamish was my favourite, and I so desperately wish rikkasets were real. I want my own Katie!

Overall, Zenn Scarlett is a very fun and enjoyable book, quite slow moving and episodic, but with enough in it that kept me engaged and interested throughout. I’m looking forward to reading more set in this fantastic universe, especially as it seems as though the plot is about to really pick up steam in the next book.


Thank you to Strange Chemistry and NetGalley for providing a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.