I love that this book began as a quick little something to put on the blog and morphed into a fully publishable book.
Ada’s an assessor who goes into alien portals to see what’s available for mining before they’re closed. She’s doing it because she’s a single mom who needs dental insurance, and her first priority is always to get home to her kids.
The portals appeared a few years back, and since monsters come spilling out within a few days, they’re assumed to be some sort of invasion. But the government has found that as long as the anchor is found and destroyed before the monsters get through, that particular portal will stay closed.
On this particular trip, the mining crew gets caught in the fight between two other clearly sentient but alien species. They’re betrayed by the warden and crew chief that should be protecting them, and most of the miners are killed. Except Ada, and the crew’s dog, Bear. When she comes to, she finds one of the fighters near her, and renders aid. That alien woman gifts her a jewel, and dies. And so we have Ada, stuck inside a portal, needing to get home.
On the outside, the head of the particular guild in charge of this portal realizes something isn’t right when only four total members of the crew return, and starts investigating, all while planning a final trip in to recover the bodies and seal the portal.
This book ends up being a lot of set up, and I’m here for the pay off. There’s some linking into another one of their series, but this should be mostly a standalone, and I’m super interested to see where they go with this.