From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

"No Man's Land: Volume 3 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)" by Sarah A. Hoyt

https://www.amazon.com/No-Mans-Land-Chronicles-Lost/dp/1630110736/134-3120523-2822023

Book number three of a three book space opera science fiction series in
the Chronicles of Lost Elly. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback published by Goldport Press in 2025.
BTW, the author has promised a fourth book in the Lost Elly series
entitled "Orphans of the Stars".

Ok, this series is little strange but very good. Publius Cornelius
Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star
Empire, a retired Commodore in the Britannia Empire of Star System,
becomes a roving junior ambassador for the Queen Eleanor. One of many
junior ambassadors, also known as Skip Hayden. While drafting a new
trade agreement with the newly found lost colony planet Draksall, Hayden
is attacked by several men with Terran blasters. In the ensuing melee,
Skip Hayden is transported via wormhole to another lost colony planet, Elly.

There are many lost colonies from Earth. When the wormhole transport technology was invented, people built a spaceship, recruited followers,
and blindly jumped into machine made wormholes. But nobody understood
how the wormhole generators really worked. And sufficiently advanced
science is indistinguishable from magic.

Elly is unlike any other lost colony planet found to date. On the lost
colony world of Elly, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate
inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong. There are no women, there are no men. All of
the human beings are hermaphrodites. And there is magic, lots and lots
of magic. Not much technology, mostly swords and bows. And the hermaphrodites are very different from the single sexed, very very
different.

Skip Hayden is still on the run with the young King of Elly and a couple
of his retainers. And offworlders with Terran blasters are still
looking for them. But it turns out that people have been stealing
babies from Elly for hundreds of years for their magic.

The book / series is a little hard to follow. There are many characters
and many events with much jumping around. But now many of the mysteries
of Elly are revealed.

The author has a fairly busy website at:
https://accordingtohoyt.com/

My rating: 5 stars out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.8 stars out of 5 stars (76 reviews)

Lynn

--- Synchronet 3.21f-Linux NewsLink 1.2