Publisher's Synopsis
A sci-fi drama of mass proportions; a secluded planetary system, indigenous integrity versus corporate interest, seen from the eyes of those on both sides of an escalating conflict. Book One in The Color of Houm series: Seeing Red.
When Veema Binnek lost her elder sister in the accident, her world came tumbling down. The interstellar Nest Corporation seemed to be the source of all her troubles. The Corporation employed her father, her departed sister, and furthermore ran just about everything on the moon and the neighboring planet. The Corporation, in fact, had been there in the Saku system long before her birth.
The planet, Houm, and its moon, Kaydal, had remained nearly completely isolated for over a century while the original Vat settlers put down roots. The red planet had given birth to organic life as a result of ancient volcanic activity, but when Mount Triste erupted again, it threatened to destroy all that the Vat people had worked for.
Not long after the first eruptions came the spacecraft of the Nest Corporation. The affluent strangers promised to work with the Vat people and help them rebuild. In exchange, Nest would have access to a valuable yet untapped resource in the planet's crust, a mineral called Houmite. The Vat people agreed. Over the next few decades, the Corporation's infrastructure grew, but so did the unrest among insular groups of Vat natives who felt as if Nest's exploitation of the natural resource was a violation of their hallowed and life-giving homeland.
When Veema came across a fellow Vat native, a young man touting the so-called truth about the deadly accident, it felt as her defiance was the perfect release for her frustration against the Corporation that had caused her so much anguish. As the reality of her and the Corporation's actions dawn upon her, though, Veema finds herself in a tug-of-war to turn things right again.
