E.S. Raye

Over the last six or seven weeks, I’ve been spending a huge amount of my time back in Las Ráfagas, the central setting of Gas Giant Gambit. I completed one round of developmental edits, and practically before the second round was finished, we’d already begun on copy and line edits! It’s been a whirlwind, and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it.

With the story fresh in my mind and the book releasing in September, now feels like a good time to start talking about it a little more. So this week I’m giving a peak at some of the themes you’ll find in Gus’s tall tale.

Don’t worry, I’ll steer far away from any spoilers.

Greed

The primary theme of Gas Giant Gambit is greed. When we meet the void drifter later called “Gus,” she only wants to look out for herself, and is only interested in getting paid. Sure, she’s got her reasons, and most are even valid–but when she comes under the employ of Laszlo Leconte, the town/outpost’s owner and chief administrator, she gets a hard look at what she could become.

Greed, power, and the corruption that follows them, swirl throughout Las Ráfagas and interpersonal connections therein.

Past vs Future

This is a theme common to both Western and sci-fi movies and books, and one I thought it important to include.

Gus inhabits an Orion Arm on the brink of change. Lightyears away, and yet closer than Gus can know, a civil war rages between human worlds; at stake is the freedom a race of now-self-aware robots. Las Ráfagas itself balances on the knife edge of the future as the demand for the fuel it mines declines with the rise of newer, better technologies.

Gus’s past is a mystery–what’s clear is she is running from it. And from the moment she sets foot on Las Ráfagas, her future is up for grabs.

Found Family & Belonging

In Gas Giant Gambit‘s first chapter, Gus is a loner. And she prefers it that way. She’s a drifter who belongs to no one and nowhere.

Until she falls, rather literally, into the embrace of the Vega family and their loyal rob farmhand Moe.

Las Ráfagas is home to a diverse group of character from a range of backgrounds and ways of life, united in common cause. A cause Gus wants nothing to do with.

For now.

The Nature of Freedom

When we meet Gus, her idea of freedom is a full fuel cell and enough spoons (currency) to keep her riding and out of reach of even the long arm of the law.

But the people of Las Ráfagas, despite the stationary nature of their lifestyle, have some things she doesn’t: each other, a true home, and perhaps most importantly, happiness.

But Gus arrives to find those things under fire. When she suggests they simply leave, they refuse, and she is forced to reevaluate her definition of freedom.

And More…

There’s so many more little things (for example, I call the currency “spoons” because of the spoon theory of mental energy rationing), but you’ll have to read it to see them all!