A ONCE IN A LIFETIME CHANCE
CAUGHT IN A GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR POWER
HER ONLY OPTION IS TO SURVIVE THE JOURNEY
An exciting future thriller that takes you on a journey of twists and suspense.
Skye Hunter, a country girl with high tech dreams, gets a chance of a lifetime at the number one tech company in the world. From STEM classes to industrial intrigue. Skye’s world goes from sleepless nights coding simple algorithms to life and death adventures involving corporate assassins, merciless rebels, and the most advanced AI mind ever created.
Her only chance of survival, with the help of her friends and skills, is to make it to one of the last cities still standing.
A ONCE IN A LIFETIME CHANCE
CAUGHT IN A GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR POWER
HER ONLY OPTION IS TO SURVIVE THE JOURNEY
An exciting future thriller that takes you on a journey of twists and suspense.
Skye Hunter, a country girl with high tech dreams, gets a chance of a lifetime at the number one tech company in the world. From STEM classes to industrial intrigue. Skye’s world goes from sleepless nights coding simple algorithms to life and death adventures involving corporate assassins, merciless rebels, and the most advanced AI mind ever created.
Her only chance of survival, with the help of her friends and skills, is to make it to one of the last cities still standing.
I entered Halcyon's lobby through two large glass doors at the front of the massive skyscraper. This place must pull in some serious cash, I thought as I crossed the polished marble floor to the reception desk. The security guard sitting at the huge mahogany desk looked up from his hologram computer screen.
This was why I’d worked so hard. A real chance. Halcyon, one of the top cyber corporations in the world. All the sleepless nights studying at my desk until my feet went numb. It’s all paid off.
I stopped in front of the desk, stood up straight, and spoke in my most professional voice. “Skye Hunter, to see Mr. Johnson in the Human Resources department. I have an appointment.” I smiled.
He frowned and typed a few strokes. “Sorry, no Winter on the list.”
My smile faded. “Not Winter. Hunter…with an H.”
A few more strokes followed by a sigh. He pulled a security badge from a plastic basket on the desk and slid it over to me without making eye contact once.
“Fifth floor,” he said, kind of half motioning toward the wall of elevators. “See the attendant at the reception desk and she'll call Johnson.” Then he turned his attention back to his computer screen.
On the fifth floor, I walked into a massive room filled with cubicles and a sea of techs bustling back and forth.
“Hello,” I said to the receptionist sitting behind the information desk. As I approached, my name displayed on the holo screen hovering above her desk.
“You must be Skye,” she said with a smile. “That's a pretty name.”
“Thank you.”
“Mr. Johnson's on his way.”
A large middle-aged man with tightly trimmed red hair walked up to the desk. “Craig Johnson, Halcyon Human Resources,” he said, stopping directly in front of me.
We fist bumped and smiled. Not sure if I'll ever get used to the whole fist bump thing, but it's better than shaking hands with sweaty-palmed guys, especially when they hang on too long.
Then something caught my attention. Johnson's right eye must have been digitally enhanced—his pupil was like a tiny video screen with data scrolling across it.
“We're thrilled to have you here, Skye,” he said, smiling.
I've read about optical augmentation before, but I’ve never actually seen it up close. And it must have been scrolling my bio, or something. I think I saw my name in tiny letters.
“Oh...thank you.” I said, still staring at the movie credits scrolling across his eye.
“Okay then, let's get started. Hope you got some rest last night. It's going to be a busy morning,” he said in a much too chipper tone before he launched into some Welcome to the Company speech, he'd probably repeated a thousand times.
Rest... I hadn't slept more than two hours, dreading the stress of the first day. My stomach was in knots, and a headache was already creeping up the back of my neck.
I nodded politely. “Looking forward to it.”
We walked down a long hallway teaming with techs shuffling from one office to another. A couple of people stared as we passed. Guess it was obvious—the new girl, escorted by Johnson on her first day. I ran my finger along my collar to stretch out the brand-new, and way too itchy, business attire. I was already sweating.
We dashed through the crowd. He moved pretty fast for an old guy. A maze of glass doors and hallways before we finally stopped in front of several brightly colored cubicles in the center of the room. Several people my age sat in the cubicles. Waiting. Obviously, the interns.
On one side of the room, gigantic holo screens stretched the entire length of the wall. Numbers and data scrolled in a series of charts and graphs.
“This is yours,” Johnson said, pulling back a black leather office chair. The small cubicle was about four or five feet wide.
Nice. I ran my hand across the soft leather. This isn't bad.
“Make yourself comfortable. Someone will be down soon to escort you to your meeting with the executives.”
I sat down, Johnson turned and left, and a nice-looking guy walked over.
”I'm Asher.”
He was about my age, with brown hair and dreamy brown eyes.
”Skye,” I said, flashing my best business associate smile. The one I had practiced all week.
“One of the interns?” he asked with a smile.
His smile looks almost real. “Yeah, you?”
“Yeah, all of us,” gesturing to the others. Several people about my age sat at workstations, staring at their cell phones, waiting. All were well-dressed in business wear and seemed really serious. I knew how important this day was to them. A wave of emotion ran through me.
All because of Alton Marsk, CEO and founder of Halcyon. The story was that he’d had a bad experience in school, didn’t fit in. Always an outcast. The other students considered him a geek and made fun of him. After he founded Halcyon and made billions, he announced the company would select eight high school seniors every year from schools across the country.
They would work beside skilled professionals at the top of his corporation on only the most important projects, a kind of revenge of the nerds—screw the world for picking on me in high school thing. Social outcasts that didn't fit in at high school would become admired in his corporate empire. He believed these geeks were his key to innovation, to cultivating fresh ideas.
This was the third year of the Halcyon geek-cheat. That’s what people called it. No one knew how the selection process worked. A closed-source algorithm, Marsk called it. Feed the software terabytes of data on high school students from around the country and the machine logic would choose the most brilliant. Every year on September 21, the date he’d started the company, the algorithm spit out eight names of people whose lives would change forever. And who would have ever thought I'd make the cut.
Numbers were always dancing around in my head. Dad said it was a gift. An obscure way of figuring out complex algorithms in my head, like him. More like a curse for me, but I always seemed to select the correct answer on exams. Somehow, though, I felt like I didn't belong, especially here. Like the algorithm, or whatever it was, had picked the wrong geek.
“I'm from Dallas,” Asher said, offering me another smile. “Staying with friends for a few days until we move into the dorms. How ’bout you?”
“I kind of grew up in Washington, DC, but a few years ago my family moved to North Carolina. We live out in the country now, on a farm. The city’s nice. I miss it sometimes.”
“A farm?”
“Kind of. My dad was an IT engineer and worked remotely. So, we don't really farm.”
“Cows and goats, that kind of thing?”
“Yeah, that kind of thing.” I smiled, and it wasn't my business smile. Some weight kind of lifted from my shoulders. He seemed like a nice guy. This first morning might not be so bad after all.
“Cool. I like animals, he said. “I volunteer at the no-kill animal shelter back home.”
“I have a horse and ride a lot,” I said. “Ride some mean motocross too. We don't really have goats—”
“Goats!” someone chimed in behind me. I turned.
“Mark,” he said, with an obviously practiced smile.
“Skye.”
“I'm from Arlington.”
“Arlington? We lived there when I was in middle school,” I said.
The girl beside him smiled. “Hi, I'm Niki.”
“Nice name.”
“Thanks.”
She was tall and slim, with long black hair, wearing a blue business dress and jacket. She seemed cool. I would have talked to her more, but I’d had enough of the social anxiety of meeting everyone. Sensory overload. My feet were sore from the new shoes Mom insisted I wear, so I nodded politely, settled at my desk, and pulled a coffee thermos from my backpack. All the drama of the first day had me a little jittery.
To Skye Hunter, Halcyon is the place where tech innovation happens and strong minds are brought together to change the world. Chosen as a senior in highschool, Skye becomes one of those sharp minds when she accepts the internship position that would quickly change her life.
When a new computer software brings Artificial Intelligence to its peak, Skye finds herself caught in the middle of a war she didn’t ask to be a part of. She and her friends must race across the country to survive the clash of two groups, both zeroing in on the secret information she swore she’d protect.
Blade of Glass and Bone was a thrill of a ride from start to finish. From the very beginning I loved Skye’s country girl personality, and I sympathized with her anxiety on the first day of her internship. Coming from a country upbringing myself, I felt a strong connection to her character and I think Chambers did an excellent job in making her seem real.
Social anxiety and sensory overload were only a few obstacles Skye had to face in her new position, and her troubles only escalated from there. Fortunately for her, she found a place in a group of friends that all had each other’s backs. While loyal to the core, each member of the group had a unique personality, and I loved the diversity of their characters. A workaholic, a rule breaker, and a girlfriend to get foot massages with were only a few of the types of people Skye was able to call her friends.
While I’m talking about characters, I’d also like to commend the author for blurring the lines between good and evil in the portrayal of each side of the war. I’ve gotten tired of black and white morality where one side is all good and the other is all bad. Blade of Glass and Bone gives you a taste of some morally gray characters and is a better representation of what a real war might play out like.
On a separate note, I really enjoyed the tech aspect of this story and wished that the author would have gone into more detail on the AI’s capabilities. The war erupted before we could see the AI’s true potential, and I can only hope there will be a sequel to answer my many questions.
Overall, this novel was a quick and exciting read that leaves the reader thirsty for more. I’d recommend this book to fans of futuristic thrillers and friends banding together in order to survive.