Mirror Island (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9798998548611)

Solarpunk: Optimistic science fiction based on renewable energies. What happens after the collapse of civilization as we know it? What is our next stage of evolution? Who will we become? In the heart of Cascadia, evolution continues to unfold on Earth and in the universe. On Mirror Island, our alien spirit emerges as Doreena Flora Moriena, held fast by her strict employer Rock Trayntor in the confines of C-Town, suddenly finds herself transported to an earthly, unearthly island.

Doreena Flora Moriena is an alien being composed of quanta, billions of tiny sentient particles, shaped by human thought. So long as she lives within the confines of C-town, a post-revolutionary bastion controlled by patriarch Rock Trayntor and his club of cronies, she's none other than a newspaper saleswoman driven by a need to sell, sell, sell to maintain her identity as The Mirror's top saleswoman. But after her grandfather dies, leaving her with unanswered questions about who she is and where she comes from, Doreena begins to teleport to a tropical island paradise like no place on earth. As the frequency and duration of her impromptu island retreats increases, Doreena's secure life in C-town dismantles and her passion awakens. She fights to keep her car, home, and job, while sliding through the symptoms of total burnout, and juggling two new boyfriends with conflicting theories about what's causing the teleportation and how she should live her life. Alonso, a die-hard surfer, explains it with Tibetan philosophy. Earnest, an aerospace engineer, thinks it has something to do with the top-secret project at his workplace, AeroFlux. Then, just when Doreena decides to give up the fight and give in to her growing island addiction, the teleportation stops. To reclaim her island paradise, Doreena assembles a rag-tag band of Islanders and dethrones Rock Trayntor. In doing so, she discovers her alien identity. In the end she confronts the island's angry deities - her parents, who try again to force her to chose between C-town and the fantastical island. But now, Doreena knows how to create her own options. It's a story about the impossibility of a perfect escape, false choices, and how we each have to find fulfillment in our own way.