"The Altreian Enigma"

Richard Phillips is the author of the bestselling science fiction series, The Rho Agenda. He applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, The Altreian Enigma, and reported the following:

Page 69 of The Altreian Enigma begins Chapter 11. Here it is in its entirety:

As the alarm sounded throughout the Parthian, the overlord felt the brief mental disturbance from a mind that Parsus had not felt in thousands of cycles, one he’d believed he would never encounter again.

Apparently the impossible had happened. His twin brother had escaped.

The council guard would respond, but they would not be enough to stop Khal Teth. Only the combined will of the Circle of Twelve, a dozen of the thirteen members of the High Council, could accomplish that. Fortunately, the requisite council members were present inside the Parthian on this day. Parsus merely had to assemble them to enable the confrontation that would put his beloved brother back inside his eternal prison. He only hoped that his guards could delay Khal Teth long enough to enable him to pull the necessary pieces into place.

* * *

Khal Teth moved along the gently curving outer hallway, the numbers of guards he had turned to his side growing to fifteen as they left the more troublesome of their lot dead on the floor behind him.

Page 69 is representative of The Altreian Enigma and of the Rho Agenda Series as a whole. This is a near-present-day story of a small group of extraordinary humans as they fight to prevent two warring alien species from assimilating or destroying the Earth’s population. Beyond that, this is a coming of age story for a human race that is struggling to cope with beneficial technologies that could tear the world apart. What if all diseases were suddenly eradicated and the human lifespan extended tenfold? Sometimes getting what you want can lead to a horrible outcome.

Visit Richard Phillips's blog.

--Marshal Zeringue