Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.
Publication Order of Darest Books
Publication Order of Eferum Books
Publication Order of Medair Books
Publication Order of The Singularity Game Books
Publication Order of Touchstone Books
Publication Order of The Trifold Age Books
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
Publication Order of Anthologies
+ Click to View all Anthologies
Andrea K. Host is an Australian science fiction and fantasy author born in Sweden but currently living in Sydney. She spends much of her time admiring her garden full of weeds, gaming, and writing the books that she loves to read. The novels she likes are usually science and fantasy fiction works that take a “zero-difference” perspective to issues of sexuality, race, and gender and are set in fantastical worlds. In between, she may be found battling Sydney traffic while going to her day job and feeding her cat. Somehow, she has managed to publish more than fifteen novels spread between six novels. However, she is best known for the “Touchstone Trilogy” that she launched with the novel “Stray” that was first published in 2011. Most of her novels are self-published after she had a bad experience trying to publish the traditional way. It was a frustrating process and so she decided to step back from the process and just write her novel for fun. Host then opted to write a fiction blog since she had always loved the diary format given that one would not have to follow the traditional conventions of writing. She soon found herself recording every day with all its relevant and irrelevant details. When she showed it to a schoolgirl who loved reading the genre, she so loved it that she knew she had something. She published her debut novel “Champion of the Rose” in 2010.
Andrea always loved to write though she never thought of making a career as an author while she was growing up. She started writing as a fifteen-year-old when she wrote an epic fantasy collection quest that had all the usual invading armies,’ princes, faceless evils, spaceships, dwarves and elves. She had always been a voracious reader and her reading was a huge inspiration for her to tell her own stories. It all started when she was gifted a small typewriter as a high schooler and began writing her fantasy. As a book a day reader, Host particularly loved to tell stories where women and girls took center stage. This naturally led to the desire to write her own stories that had resolutions and characters that suited her tastes. As to her inspiration, she has asserted that she has been influenced by many authors over the years. Nonetheless, her biggest influence was Josephine Tey’s “The Daughter of Time.” While reading about a detective reading history while hospitalized sounds like a terrible premise for a novel, she found it interesting. How the author tells the story from history is what she found fascinating and she would never look at her world in the same way again.
When Andrea Host is not writing her novels, she has a day job writing templates and manuals, where she pretends to know all the answers. She also gardens during the weekends and plays computer games. She particularly likes RPGs and has an addiction to hidden object games which she upgraded to when she got tired of adventure games. Andrea also loves reading and counts among her favorites Robin McKinley’s “Beauty,” Andre Norton’s “Catseye,” and Diana Wynne Jones’ “Howl’s Moving Castle.”
“Stray” the debut novel of the “Touchstone” series by Andrea K. Host introduces Cassandra Devlin on the last day of high school. She had walked out of school while exams were going on and walked into the forest of bizarre trees and animals not ever seen. She knows that she will be lucky to survive and get out of the forest alive or unharmed. In the maze of abandoned buildings, she soon learns that she has to find solutions to even more puzzles. Where had all the people gone, why does she feel like someone is stalking her and what is the mist that covers the building during moonlit nights. Cass is unnerved but is overjoyed when the formidable Setari arrives on the scene. She has been moved from a primitive world to one that is incredibly advanced technologically. It is a world in which nanotech computers are injected into human skulls and most of the people do not like leaving the monstrous cities painted all white. Cass soon finds herself torn between two worlds, a refugee displaced and processed as a stray. She is struggling with a strange culture and language and needs to adapt to teleporting friends, virtual friends, and a deep-seated attitude that sees the likes of her as slow and retrograde. Will she ever find her way back home and will the people in the world she now lives let her leave when they learn how valuable she is.
“Lab Rat One” by Andrea Host is set months after Cassandra left Earth and found herself on a strange planet. She is dealing with a lot of complications from manufacturing blankets to assisting psychics in their wars with monsters with keen memories. She has so far been unable to find a way to go back to planet Earth though she now has a purpose and has made friends. Unfortunately, she is now very valuable to her hosts, and the people she calls her friends have also been charged with guarding her too. They have been ordered to control and investigate her abilities to find the limits of the touchstone. She never thought she would one day become a test subject with frequent injuries and no privacy. She also has to live with the fact that her Setari companions see her as nothing more than an assignment. Cass cannot help but fantasize about a life she can control and a semblance of normalcy. Over time, she becomes even more dangerous and now believes that only training and testing may be the best protection from her abilities.
Andrea K. Host’s “Caszandra” opens to Devlin at a loss at what she is, though she acknowledges that she is running out of time. She had been saved from the wild world of Muina and proved herself very valuable to the residents of Tare. Trips to her new home will no longer be filled with death as the very important city of Kalasa is now free. They have finally started making progress after years with no answers. But suddenly the aliens start attacking in unprecedented numbers and it seems as if space is being torn apart. Cass has been injured so many times that the Tarens do not want to use her again as they are afraid that they may lose her. She has become a very important person in her new homeland and is determined to do everything in her power to find answers to difficult answers in her life and that of her fellow citizens. Some questions she is asking are what role do the aliens play and why are the Nurans so reclusive yet so interested in rescuing her from her new friends? Will she find the answers before something bad happens to her?
Book Series In Order » Authors » Andrea K. Höst
Leave a Reply