Blog Tour: THE ORDER OF THE BANSHEE by Robyn Singer

 

The Order of the Banshee

by Robyn Singer

 

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GENRE: Sci Fi Space Opera

 

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BLURB: It’s been five years since Yael and Molina reunited. Yael is one of the richest and most infamous thieves in the universe and a member of the Order of the Banshee. She is rising through the ranks of the elite organization with her wife and her ride-or-die best friends, Aarif and P’Ken, at her side, and she’s even running her own school for thieves. Molina, former captain in the universe’s premiere peacekeeping organization, the Sunrisers, is happily married to Yael and tells herself that’s enough.

 

Their seemingly perfect lives are interrupted when they receive news of the death of Molina’s father. When Molina returns home for his funeral, she reunites with her former friend and now enemy: Kaybell, the emperor of the Cykebian Empire. Kaybell, eager to mend the relationship, informs Molina that her father was murdered and offers to help Molina find those responsible and bring them to justice.

 

While Molina and Kaybell hunt the people responsible for her father’s death, Yael is hunted by an invincible assassin – one with a terrible secret. These two seemingly unrelated events are more connected than Yael or Molina could possibly imagine.

 

 

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Excerpt One:

 

Yael was never peaceful in her sleep. Sometimes it was adorable, as she’d blurt out lines from her ridiculous dreams and punch and kick the air. Other times it was annoying as Hell, as she’d sleepwalk, go to the fridge, and stuff food in my mouth. And usually it was weird food she and Aarif liked that I wouldn’t normally touch. But sometimes, it wasn’t adorable or annoying. Sometimes it was scary.

 

“Ahh!” Yael shrieked, shaking her knees. “Ahhh!”

 

“Yael, baby, wake up,” I said, getting on top of her and resting my hands on her face. “Wake up!”

 

Yael’s eyes jolted open and she tried to throw me off her. That had happened a few times before, but I’d learned how to grab onto her so I stayed in place. As Yael panted, she wrapped her arms around my waist and squeezed me like one of the stuffed animals she’d had as a kid.

 

“It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s okay. You’re home. You aren’t back there.”

 

Yael’s warm breath continued to blow against my ear. “It hurts. It shouldn’t, but it does. Every other week…I’m on the Noriker. And every time I close my eyes, I see that bitch.” Yael roared, slamming her fists down on the bed, shaking the entire room. “I could have killed her. Instead, she’s the fucking emperor.”

 

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What do you like best and least about your characters?

This a fun thing to talk about, honestly. It’s my philosophy as a writer that characters

come before everything else. If you don’t have likable, complex, and/or relatable characters, it

doesn’t matter how strong your prose is, how well-built your world is, or how dramatic your plot

is; your story does not work. It’s for this reason that the bulk of my time when writing a new

story goes into fleshing out my main cast as much as possible. And as a result, there’s a lot to

love and a lot to hate about most of them. Because there’s so much to say about them, I’ll just be

discussing my two lead protagonists: Yael Pavnick and Molina Langstone.

Yael was specifically designed to be everything I would have wanted in a hero as a kid. I

love how smart and strong she is, I love how she’s confident against whatever stands in her way,

and I love the way she goes out of her way to help people, and cares so incredibly deeply for the

weird little family she’s assembled around her. I also love her for the representation she provides,

being a Jewish, Autistic, ADHD lesbian, much like myself, and how some of this is reflected in

her major weakness: her lack of social skills. But what I think I like best about her is the way

that, in response to her childhood dreams being crushed and the images of her idols shattered,

she forged her own path that went against everything she’d ever been taught to believe. While

she once desired to be a member of the intergalactic peacekeeping group, The Sunrisers, an

organization whose true purpose is protecting the ruling class and maintaining the strict status

quo, she’s now a thief, one who believes that everyone should be free to live however they see

fit. If I could smack Yael over the head for anything, it would be her insensitivity. It’s not her

fault, my baby’s deeply Autistic, but while she loves her family, she can also be deeply ignorant

of their feelings. And it’s this issue that causes most of the problems in both The Order of the

Banshee, as well as the previous book in the series, The Sunrisers.

As for Yael’s wife and co-protagonist, Molina, what I love most about her is how

tragically real she is. Molina isn’t nearly as capable as Yael, nor is she as fun to read about, but

you’d probably get along with her much better if you met her in a cafe, as the one thing she does

have over Yael is that she’s capable of masking her Autism and acting appropriately in social

situations. While Yael shouts everything on her mind and energetically leaps into every situation

with reckless abandon, Molina is calm, patient, and insecure. For all her hard work as a child, she

could never keep up with the unrivaled prodigy that was her bestie, Yael. Unlike, Yael, however,

Molina did end up joining the Sunrisers and continued to be brainwashed by their propaganda,

only to abandon years later to be with Yael, both out of a sense of morality and a desire to be

with the woman she loves. Only, as we see in The Order of the Banshee, sometimes throwing

away everything for the person you love isn’t worth it. For Molina, the emptiness inside her only

made her lifelong resentment of her wife even worse. Her story is a painful one, but there are so

many aspects of it I feel people can relate to. What I most hate about Molina is every decision

she makes in the final chapters of The Order of the Banshee. The actions she takes in response to

all the pain she’s in and all the strife she’s dealt with only serve to hurt herself and everyone

around her, and I’m sure readers will be shouting at their books, begging for her to stop.

 

 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Robyn Singer is a lifelong New Yorker, and since she was a kid playing with her action figures, all she’s wanted to do is tell stories. She went to SUNY Purchase to get a degree in Playwriting & Screenwriting with a minor in Film and has produced several comic books, but she’s always had her eye on becoming a published novelist.

 

As an Autistic, bisexual trans woman, diversity and inclusion in stories are vitally important to her, and she seeks to represent as many groups as possible in her work. While she wants to show characters of marginalized groups experiencing joy, she also draws inspiration from real-world problems which bother her.

 

The Sunrisers (Cinnabar Moth Publishing, November 2022) is her debut novel. Order of the Banshee is book in the The Ricochet Trilogy. Robyn was the author in residence for quester 1 of 20222 for Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections. She writes novels and short stories of all genres and for all ages, and she continues to produce comic books. Her ongoing series, Final Gamble, began publiscation by Band of Bards in 2022.

 

See her ramble about her passions on Twitter https://twitter.com/emmalsinger

Follow her Instagram https://www.instagram.com/emmalsinger/

 

 

 

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GIVEAWAY 

 Robyn Singer will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway