Alien Roads (Dominion Over the Earth, #2) / Dominion Over the Earth (ePub)

Saintess Myri Vahro rejects her Prince to snare a savage and alters the destiny of her Nation.

In the aftermath of the enemy attack that destroyed Star Force and threw the inhabitants of Earth into chaos, the new emperor Arulezz Zarr has two priorities: Rebuild Star Force and get a spy into one of the mysterious pockets of light that emerged to protect the capital cities of Earth from the invaders. He believes that David Pierce, a Latter-day Saint chosen by Tohmazz Zarr himself to be the consort of noblewoman Myri Zarr-Vahro, is the key to achieving both goals. Arulezz manipulates Myri into accepting the assignment to go into the Kansas City dome of light to seduce David into marriage and allegiance to the Zarrist nation.

Betrothed to Myri since childhood, the emperor's brother Prince Jahnzel struggles to convince Myri to reject her new assignment and fails. While Myri prepares to go to Kansas City, Jahnzel commands his four-ship fleet to check on the Eden Colony during a trade mission. With the destruction of the Zarrists' Control Colony by the rebellious planet-spirit who calls herself Tempest, Jahnzel's critical command to maintain communication silence remains unknown to the surviving colonies. When Sara Alexander Carroll and her team send a distress signal from the planet, they set in motion a chain of events that will cripple the Zarrist nation and change their own prospects forever.

The Last Days' quest for Zion promises to be so glorious, so challenging, and so extraordinary that stories speculating on it in a literal way have difficulty doing it justice. Apply a generous dose of fantasy, and what results are novels for Latter-day Saints by Katherine Padilla that will transport readers to a harrowing but hopeful alien future.

From the author:

In Fall to Eden, I began exploring the psyche of a planet-spirit that doesn't fill the measure of its creation (D&C 88:25). It seemed fitting that Alien Roads would continue that exploration and contrast it with a fantastical look at our own seemingly invisible planet-spirit. To make the story even more fun, three of my point-of-view characters are nobles who rule an arrogant race from one of God's "worlds without number" (Moses 1:33). One of those nobles is determined to save his people by taking dominion over the earth, and he will use any means necessary. The other two are just as committed to saving their nation, but they disagree about how to do it in God's way. When the two well-intentioned nobles come into contact with Earth's planet-spirit via her now visible "Light," they're forced to come face-to-face with God's real plans—and their own fallibility.