SPOTLIGHT w/Top 10 Literary Inspirations - Aries' Red Sky (Vergassy Chronicles, #1) by James Young Narrator: Jennifer Jill Araya

Aries' Red Sky

Vergassy Chronicles, #1

by James Young

Narrator: Jennifer Jill Araya
Length: 16 hours and 21 minutes
Released: August 27th 2018

Publisher: James L. Young Jr.
Genre: Science Fiction; Space Opera

Author James Young's Top 10 Literary Inspirations

#1 Alas, Babylon I read this book as a child and it’s always stuck with me. Frank does a very good job of dealing with disaster without sinking into the proverbial “grimdark” of later works. 

#2 Dies the Fire Another disaster book. This one really highlights S.M. Stirling’s writing style and his ability to make ordinary people into heroes. If I won the lottery and never had to work again in my life, this would be a series I would catch up on with my newfound spare time. 

#3 Red Storm Rising Another influence when I was young. I’ve always liked Clancy’s decision to go with the omniscient third person when necessary to convey the chaos that is unfolding across an entire engagement. 

#4 Robotech Series When I’m doing my elevator pitch for the Vergassy series, I tell people it’s like “Battlestar Galactica, Aliens, and Robotech thrown into a blender.” A small, niche fandom, the novelizations were written by multiple people under the pseudonym “Jack McKinney.” Regardless of who was doing things, this was a huge influence on me with regards to how I conceptualize space combat. 

#5 The Big E Although Barrett Tillman’s Enterprise takes advantage of a broader interview base on scholarship, this is a book that I consider the “gold standard” for recounting a vessel’s history. As with all my books, there are elements of it that interweave individual ship’s actions and discussion of their crews.

#6 The Girl With the Silver Eyes I liked this one for the way that Willo Roberts got us into the character’s mind and motivation. A good example of an outsider feeling so different...then realizing it’s a big world out there and that means there’s lots of other folks like oneself. 

#7 Bridge to Teribithia This was one of the first books I remember ever making me cry. In that way, it taught me the proper method for conducting a character’s demise, i.e., it serves the plot and cuts the reader. 

#8 The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 A grim, somber walk through as to how the United States went from a nation with minor friction to folks actively shooting at one another in less than a decade. Does a very good job of showing how the majority of the country did not want a no kidding Civil War...yet the nation got one just the same. This helps to understand how people can so demonize and mischaracterize the other sides’ actions that it’s almost impossible to reconcile without a major defeat. 

#9 This Kind of War This book lays out the price of unpreparedness versus having a combat mindset. With regards to Aries’ Red Sky, I do model some of the Confederation Fleet’s unpreparedness off of the same issues the United States Army had in 1950. Preparedness is a mindset. 

#10 Team Yankee This is another “World War Three” novel. Unlike Red Storm Rising, it is very focused at the small unit level. I loved it in high school before I even left to join the Army. After I became an officer, I realized Harold Coyle really did have a good grip on small unit interactions and craziness. 

Honorable Mention-- When Worlds Collide / After Worlds Collide (Toss up so I just added both) This is the go to book for “The world is ending.” While it’s somewhat dated (from the 1930s), it’s somewhat prescient in how it foresees the horrors that the “European fascists” are capable of. While it’s down the road, one of the prequel novellas for my series will have several homages to these two books.

READ MORE . . . ARIES' RED SKY (Vergassy Chronicles, #1) . . .