Innocence Reborn is my newest novel, the first in the Orphans of the Stars sci-fi series, and it’s coming to Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats on June 9! Remember to check out the free prologue on my Patreon, and enjoy this look at the story’s characters.
The primary story of Orphans of the Stars as a whole, and particularly Innocence Reborn, centers on children. Some are fairly young, some are nearing adulthood, but all are underage. As the story progresses, they come to be one big family. Not always a happy family, thanks to the events of the novel, but they all know they’re stuck together, that their fates are intertwined. So let’s take a quick look at each of them.
Main characters
First up are the “main” characters, those whose perspectives we see. All told, of the 17 on the Innocence roster, ten of them get time on stage in the first novel, with a few others having their chance to shine later in the series.
-
Levi Maclin, age 15, is a space nut. Oldest of three children, he’s enamored with space, and he loves the idea of traveling through the starry void. Adding to that, he has those natural leadership qualities that make him take charge in a pinch. Levi can get stressed, and his decision-making abilities aren’t always the best, but he feels personally responsible for those placed in his care, in a way that, for example, a military captain wouldn’t.
-
Justin Maclin, age 11, is Levi’s younger brother. Your typical preteen, for the most part, Justin tries to play the tough guy. He’s not a bully by any means, but he does consider himself very masculine. He likes cars, space fighters, action movies, and things like that. Anything fast and furious, anything that explodes. He’s good at making friends, too, as long as they’re other boys.
-
Gabriel Cross, technically the oldest boy on the Innocence at age 16, doesn’t want to be a leader. He’s more of a thinker, a problem-solver. At home in Amarillo, he’s on the track team, which leaves him very put off by the idea of a place where you can’t run. So he sometimes complains about being in space, but when there’s work to be done, he’ll do it. Of the whole group, Gabriel’s also the most paternal and charitable, especially watching out for his siblings by birth, but ready to help anyone in need.
-
Hanna Laviola, also 16, earns the title of oldest overall by a few months over Gabriel. She’s a native and lifelong resident of Marshall Colony’s capital city of New Venezia, where she has a summer job wrangling the children of the elite visiting Outland Resort. But she likes that. She loves working with children, and her career plans revolve around daycares, preschools, and the like. Ending up in a situation where she has to become the counselor to sixteen scared kids, all while floating around in space, never crossed her mind.
-
Ed Tran, age 15, isn’t a prodigy. He doesn’t consider himself a genius, and he isn’t even sure he wants to follow in his father’s footsteps. But his father is a doctor who talked his way into a paid vacation at Outland Resort, ostensibly to study the effects of its environment on visitors. Ed comes along for the ride, because it’s summer, he’s out of school, and maybe he can make a few friends among the upper crust. And he has picked up some medical knowledge, which is a good thing to have on a ship full of kids.
-
Lucas Joshi is only 13 years old, but his future is already planned. He’ll inherit the family fortune, and what a fortune it is: stock options, cash, property, and probably even mineral rights for a lunar crater or two. His mother is the bigwig in the family, and she taught her son well, showing him the ins and outs of business firsthand. As the proverbial rich kid, he doesn’t like interacting with other children without a reason, which leads some to see him as shy and withdrawn. But behind that quiet exterior lurks a growing intellect and a corporate-trained ruthlessness.
-
Mika Harriman is 14, and she’s a colonial girl through and through. She loves her home on Marshall Colony, and she can even stand Outland Resort. After all, her mom works there, so it obviously helps the colony. In most respects, Mika’s a typical teenage girl, and that makes her hard to describe in broad strokes. She has an intelligence and an analytical brain, which has led her to find interest in STEM fields, but her emotions sometimes get the better of her. At her age, that can lead to fireworks.
-
Tori McConnell, despite being 11 years of age, would boldly claim to have spent a decade in space. She really hasn’t, though. It’s more like five summers, a couple of winter breaks, and the occasional jaunt to an orbital station. All of that came in the company of her uncle, Glenn; her parents died when she was very young, and he took her in, adopting her and bringing her with him whenever possible. Tori considers herself a space expert, a model crewman, and someone twice as old as she really is.
-
Nic Cross, also 11, is Gabriel’s little brother. He just started middle school in the year before his big brother won a vacation to the stars, and he’s loving it. Strong for his age—he’s already the star of his school’s wrestling team—and loyal to his friends, he knows he’s not cut out to be the captain of a spaceship. Instead, he’d rather find other ways to help. All he wants is the chance to be in control of his own life, just like any middle child.
-
Derry Glass, age 12, is shy, slight, and smart. Although she’s very often timid and untalkative, she can get a bit…intense. Especially when she finds something she likes. On top of that, she’s good at reading a situation, at seeing the possibilities. While she saw quite a few of the other children at Outland Resort while her father was working on upgrading its computer network, she barely said a word to any of them, instead spending her days reading, watching movies, learning about the world around her.
Supporting characters
Though the story of Innocence Reborn is told through the eyes of these ten adolescents (using the term very loosely in a couple of cases), they aren’t the only important characters. The other seven on the ship feature prominently. They’re always around, and some play big roles later in the series.
-
Malik Almadi, at 14, is on his way to into high school, and he dreams of being a pilot like his father. Lucky for him, the elder Almadi got assigned to the defense of Marshall Colony. So, while school’s out for the summer, he gets to watch some of the very boring patrol work that goes on in a system on the outskirts of human space. That’s enough to satisfy Malik, even as he dreams of a more exciting life.
-
Reza Vinter, 13 years old, belongs to a prestigious New England family. His brother Karim even has a job working for the State Department, giving him the opportunity for a vacation. A chance to make connections, except that Reza is an introvert in the extreme. Bookish, quiet, and altogether nerdy, he’d rather be anywhere than a resort, let alone one 70 light-years from home.
-
Alicia Cross, youngest of three at 10, looks up to her brothers Gabriel and Nic. But she’s also her own girl, with her own life. She likes to explore, loves being adored as the “baby” of the family, and lives in the moment in a way her siblings barely understand.
-
Rachel Shao is a mere 9 years old, and she’s lived with her grandparents in New Venezia since she was 4. They’re all she knows. Rachel hasn’t really had time to grow much as either a character or a person yet. She paid attention to all her grandmother’s traditional cooking lessons, but not all the math classes at school. And she sometimes has trouble making friends, mostly because she’s quick to cry when things go wrong.
-
Aron Alvarez, 10, is the last of the Marshall colonials. He’s a gamer, and another child of an Outland employee. But he’s never once been in space, and it shows. He gets sick. Even after he grows accustomed to a lack of gravity, he’s still not comfortable swimming through the air. Fortunately, two other boys about his age take him under their wing, but he’d just rather play games. He’s got a lot of them, and he sometimes feels like he’s the only one who knows how to keep them organized.
-
Sora Okada, another 9-year-old, doesn’t have much to show for those years. She’s a fairly average student, quick to startle or scare, hard to talk to. Just being on a new planet overwhelms her, and that’s before she ends up on a spaceship, separated from her family, with only a bunch of strange kids for company.
-
Holly Maclin, youngest of the lot at 7, is Levi’s little sister. It’s hard to talk about her without spoiling the novel, though. Here, I’ll just say that she’s fond of her brothers, and that she is young enough that wonder comes from more than space for her.