AUSTERE

Austere is a completed 136,000-word work of YA Fiction that depicts a world where a person’s intelligence means the difference between a life of luxury or drudgery. Austere is an intense, character driven adventure story told from the perspectives of teenagers Alice and Kia, granting the reader a look at life in the affluence of the city, as well as the disadvantaged world outside of it. Austere is a story packed with action, humor, and emotion as readers follow Kia and Alice into rebellions, friendships, and romance.

 

Alice:

Under her father, General Mallory’s, thumb—and fists—Alice merely exists within the city walls. Alice has everything: wealth, intelligence, and power… but she wants more than to simply participate in the mind-numbingly boring routines of the city dwellers. She wants to live. Alice longs for a world full of contrast and excitement. She longs for a world where intelligence doesn’t equal affluence. She longs for freedom. As the daughter of the city’s most ruthless leader, trained only to follow in her father’s violent footsteps, Alice must decide if rebelling against the laws of the city, the laws of her father, will be worth the price she will pay.

 

Kia:

Banished to live outside of the city’s walls as a child because of her low intelligence, Kia now spends her days alone, save for the horses she is charged with raising for the city. Born mute, Kia feels most herself with her horses, who don’t mind that she doesn’t speak. Kia loathes giving them up to the city, and has a rebellious streak of her own. She has a secret, a horse called Ink she keeps for herself in the woods. When General Mallory inspects her station and uncovers her secret, he tears Ink away from her and leaves Kia alone. Kia is powerless because of her lack of knowledge, until she meets Riven, the young rebel leader. When Riven offers Kia help getting back Ink in exchange for horses, Kia must choose to abandon her post—risking death—in search of freedom, or remain prisoner in the relative safety of the only place she’s ever known.