Westh: Sun Theives (Areoth novel)

My good friend Kat Westh, a lady from Denmark, decided that, like my friend Selene, she wanted to be in a book of mine. I asked God why these people do this to me, but he hasn't emailed me back.

If you haven't read the first Areoth book (of which this is a branch off of the first generation, the second generation going to be called Areoth 2: The Galaxy Machine), it goes something like this. This is what is written on a five star review of it on Amazon:

Areoth is a science fiction novel written by John McAdam. This book tells about the story of Captain Ki, his crew, and their adventures in deep space. Belonging to a race of 7-foot-tall humanoids known as the Xi-Klicks, they spend their entire lives in a roboticized society, practically devoid of any culture, creativity, meaning, or socializing. One day, when Captain Ki and his crew are exploring deep space, their ship malfunctions and they lose contact with their race. The crew hurtles through space for over year before finally landing on an alien world completely foreign to anything they have ever seen before. This alien world is virtually a paradise, filled with an abundance of food and animals that live harmoniously with one another. The crew is torn between living in this paradise and returning the only civilization they ever knew. Captain Ki is determined to reestablish contact with the Xi-Klicks and return home. A religious officer named BiGraham (probably inspired by Billy Graham for humor and irony)however, has his own ideas in mind and wants to take over this world and claim it as his own. BiGraham persuades 3/4 of the surviving crew to follow him and, in betrayal, turns on Captain Ki and those remain loyal. Captain Ki and the loyal part of the crew flee into the forest and escape. But when three of Captain Ki's party are kidnapped and brought back to the newly established settlement, he and those that remain with him must return to the camp to rescue them. They succeed in rescuing the three that captured and, in addition, they manage recapture the spaceship that brought them to this planet. Months later, the Captain Ki's party manages to contact a Xi-Klick vessel. This vessel enters into the planet's orbit and the party can now travel home. All but Captain Ki board it and travel. He, suffering from severe arthritis and being in old age, chooses to stay where he can finally lay to rest and die in peace, away from the roboticized society that he had spent his entire life in.


Westh 1 is about, as you could tell from the subtitle, sun thieves. Captain Westh is called on for a mission when she finds that people are stealing the energy from her sun for their own use. She has to go sort them out. Currently I am on page 105 (It's 2:39 in the morning -.-) and she has just gotten her first taste of what they look like. Some of her crew is dead, some of them are fried. Her ship, which she is using an older model lent to her by The Oversee, the overlords of the planet Xi, has been captured and cut open like a tuna can.

Here is an excerpt. Like always it has not been edited yet, but you don't pay me for this blog so deal with it, hehe:

From the side the Xi-Klicks were nudged by a skinny figure holding one of the weapons. They started to move in the direction they were nudged until they were away from the new opening in the ship. Once free, these beings began to climb inside, each one jabbering some weak language that sounded like whisperes a ghost might use. These words were indecipherable to the purple people from Xi.

The original stickmen kept their gazes on the Xi-Klicks until, seemingly out of nowhere, they got the idea that it was time to move them. Somehow they had each individually gotten the same idea at once. Moving forward they began to nudge the newcomers.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to let them take us,” the religious officer said.

Westh backed up, shaking her head. “Just do what they say for now. If they wanted us dead then we would have been dead already.”

The man chirped in again. “What if they want to dissect us while alive?” Suddenly his foot got stuck on the ground behind his other foot. He wasn’t the most graceful of beings. Yelping out of a nervous reaction, the religious officer fell backwards, landing on his rump with a deep groan.

Immediately all of the creatures aimed their sticks at the fallen man. In only a second’s passing one of them shook the stick as though he were thrusting a spear forward. A blue ball of god-knows-what shot out, flinging itself onto the downed man and, in moments, he was just a pile of molecular dust on the floor ready to be swept away.

There was a stunned silence by the living Xi-Klicks. Each one of them hustled faster as they were nudged, their eyes beaming back to the blue pile of sand on the floor. One of the goons walked over and kicked the pile of dust, showing it all over the floor before looking back at those from Xi, holding his stick firmly pointing towards them and trudging in their direction.

Once at the wall of the facility a blue shield collapsed, allowing them to enter the actual building and exit the docking bay, which they did with haste. As they entered they were bewildered by the architecture of the place. Unlike their own ships, which had walls and buttons, all that they could see were wires upon wires. In fact, the only way they had made hallways was by parting the wires at enough of a distance to create a walking space. As they moved backwards one poor soul was unlucky enough to accidentally touch one of the wires. In only moments he was a crisp, dark figure steaming on the floor beneath them.

They all walked until they came to a small, circular opening that had pieces of walls protecting the circle from wires. In the circle were four paths. In stepping forward, one of the creepers got their attention before starting to walk down a path. The other stickmen again began nudging them with the sharp ends of their staves, many times cutting the individuals they bothered. Their push was towards the one that had gotten their attention, which they began to follow with no second thoughts after seeing what had happened just moments ago.

Where were they being taken? A gassy mist traveled along some parts of the ground. It was toxic to them and caused them to cough involuntarily at times, but thankfully this was not seen as a threatening gesture to these weird creatures who simply nudged them with the tip end of their sticks every time their lungs let out a burst. While it showed no effect on their captors, the Xi-Klicks found it hard just to stay upright as the poison slowly attacked their muscles, causing them to ache and swell with lactic acid despite the fact that they were all in good shape and were not doing any strenuous workout. Slowly, behind her, Westh noticed that small groans and shortness of breath began to take effect. While she was sweating just trying to keep herself together, the fellow Xi’s behind her suffered tremendously. Something about the suit, though, gave her the edge over them all. Peering at the being before her, she wondered if its mask had anything to do with it being able to survive the walk with ease.

Further along their walk, perhaps ten minutes in, the scenery started to change. There began to be a populous of more hooded beings, but along with this came another sight that startled them. There, as the walls stopped being wires and turned into curved pieces of metal with stickmen working on adding more to protect them from the wires, were larger beings.