wyvernfire
New Member
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2017
- Messages
- 2
For the life of me I can't remember the author, title, or character names but I remember the plot well. I picked up the book from our local dollar tree several years back and lent it out to a friend. They had a house fire, I never got the book back and it's driving me nuts trying to remember details about the book. This forum has helped me find many other books, I hope I can find this one too.
Disclaimer: This book is for adults and contains content such as violent deaths and rape. A lot of the scenes from the book that stuck out to me are along these lines.
The book was hardback and I believe the cover was blue with a rocket ship in the middle.
There are 4 main characters and the story jumps from each of their perspectives. A soldier, a slave girl who is almost 18, the evil shape shifter, and a big corrupt politician who owns a huge estate and a lot of slaves who will be referred to as the human bad guy.
The setting is a future society on a distant planet, but this world isn't the most advanced, they have slavery and lot of poverty.
The gist of the plot was a dangerous shape-shifter, whose true form was that of a male lizard hominoid is being transported to a prison planet by soldiers. The shape-shifter eats people and there is no easy way to discover them unless you catch them in the act of shape shifting. The cannot change mass so holding them in a steel cage works since there isn't much of a size difference from lizard form to human. The danger lies in the fact that they can mimic any person at will but only for a short period of time. They need to be in their true form to feed and need a lot of sleep after eating which is every few days. I don't remember if humans were currently at war with the species or this villain was an extreme example of his species.
A stop to the prison planet was backwater planet with a low population and and only one major city/spaceport so any possible collateral damage would be low. The temporary facility is in the middle of nowhere miles from anything else so they can nuke it from orbit if all containment fails.
The lizard makes a game of teasing the soldiers by showing them what they would look like inside out or naked, favoring the naked form of one women soldiers. The main hero often wondered if the female's soldiers nipples were really that pink.
The main hero, thinks the lizard was cheating at cards on his shift so he uses his shock gun on him without any other provocation. He gets called out by his superior officer and sent out to the town on a boring errand. While he is gone the lizard gets out and kills everyone else at the base.
Meanwhile another main character is introduced. She is a teenager, soon to turn 18, the age in which family cannot sell her into slavery and she can be free to leave the planet. She makes sandals at a local factory and is one of the best workers there. One of her few but prized possessions is a pair of sandals her boss let her keep. One of her parents die, or was cheating and so she is sold into slavery to pay off the debts of the other spouse despite the fact she is almost 18. She is sent to the slave pens, stripped naked and sold at auction to the human bad guy.
Main hero returns to the base finds the carnage and swears revenge. He discovers from a sleazy guy in town that the human bad guy staged the escape so he could use the shape shifter for his own evil needs. This interrogation for information occurs after main hero catches the sleazy guy having sex with a mother daughter pair of whores.
Meanwhile the slave girl makes a friend with another slave at the human bad guys estate. The friend goes missing and slave girl finds her just in time to see her get eaten by the shape shifter, whom the human bad guy has on his estate. The lizard detects her and she flees in a pipe leaving a sandal behind.
The main hero meets up with the slave but they get caught, separated, and resold. The shape shifter also escapes again. The slave girl goes back to the human bad guy and he rapes her as punishment but the slave girl is relieved that it was only perfunctory as he was troubled by the lizards escape. I can't remember where the soldier ended up but he escapes.
The soldier kills the evil human, saves the slave girl, but loses the shape shifter.
The shape shifter was cornered in lizard form at a foundry. He cuts off his hand for a reason I can't remember, possibly a bomb bracelet, then assumes the form of one of the workers right before the soldier rushes in. The soldier sees the lizard's hand on the lip of the forge, notes that everyone in the room is human as has two hands and assumes the shape shifter got away or was killed in the foundry.
The book ends with the shape shifter nursing his injuries, upset because his hand won't grow back, on a ship leaving the planet, tucked away in a secluded spot preparing to sleep after he had eaten several members of the crew.
I know this was long description but it is what I remember most from the book. Thanks for everyone's help.
Disclaimer: This book is for adults and contains content such as violent deaths and rape. A lot of the scenes from the book that stuck out to me are along these lines.
The book was hardback and I believe the cover was blue with a rocket ship in the middle.
There are 4 main characters and the story jumps from each of their perspectives. A soldier, a slave girl who is almost 18, the evil shape shifter, and a big corrupt politician who owns a huge estate and a lot of slaves who will be referred to as the human bad guy.
The setting is a future society on a distant planet, but this world isn't the most advanced, they have slavery and lot of poverty.
The gist of the plot was a dangerous shape-shifter, whose true form was that of a male lizard hominoid is being transported to a prison planet by soldiers. The shape-shifter eats people and there is no easy way to discover them unless you catch them in the act of shape shifting. The cannot change mass so holding them in a steel cage works since there isn't much of a size difference from lizard form to human. The danger lies in the fact that they can mimic any person at will but only for a short period of time. They need to be in their true form to feed and need a lot of sleep after eating which is every few days. I don't remember if humans were currently at war with the species or this villain was an extreme example of his species.
A stop to the prison planet was backwater planet with a low population and and only one major city/spaceport so any possible collateral damage would be low. The temporary facility is in the middle of nowhere miles from anything else so they can nuke it from orbit if all containment fails.
The lizard makes a game of teasing the soldiers by showing them what they would look like inside out or naked, favoring the naked form of one women soldiers. The main hero often wondered if the female's soldiers nipples were really that pink.
The main hero, thinks the lizard was cheating at cards on his shift so he uses his shock gun on him without any other provocation. He gets called out by his superior officer and sent out to the town on a boring errand. While he is gone the lizard gets out and kills everyone else at the base.
Meanwhile another main character is introduced. She is a teenager, soon to turn 18, the age in which family cannot sell her into slavery and she can be free to leave the planet. She makes sandals at a local factory and is one of the best workers there. One of her few but prized possessions is a pair of sandals her boss let her keep. One of her parents die, or was cheating and so she is sold into slavery to pay off the debts of the other spouse despite the fact she is almost 18. She is sent to the slave pens, stripped naked and sold at auction to the human bad guy.
Main hero returns to the base finds the carnage and swears revenge. He discovers from a sleazy guy in town that the human bad guy staged the escape so he could use the shape shifter for his own evil needs. This interrogation for information occurs after main hero catches the sleazy guy having sex with a mother daughter pair of whores.
Meanwhile the slave girl makes a friend with another slave at the human bad guys estate. The friend goes missing and slave girl finds her just in time to see her get eaten by the shape shifter, whom the human bad guy has on his estate. The lizard detects her and she flees in a pipe leaving a sandal behind.
The main hero meets up with the slave but they get caught, separated, and resold. The shape shifter also escapes again. The slave girl goes back to the human bad guy and he rapes her as punishment but the slave girl is relieved that it was only perfunctory as he was troubled by the lizards escape. I can't remember where the soldier ended up but he escapes.
The soldier kills the evil human, saves the slave girl, but loses the shape shifter.
The shape shifter was cornered in lizard form at a foundry. He cuts off his hand for a reason I can't remember, possibly a bomb bracelet, then assumes the form of one of the workers right before the soldier rushes in. The soldier sees the lizard's hand on the lip of the forge, notes that everyone in the room is human as has two hands and assumes the shape shifter got away or was killed in the foundry.
The book ends with the shape shifter nursing his injuries, upset because his hand won't grow back, on a ship leaving the planet, tucked away in a secluded spot preparing to sleep after he had eaten several members of the crew.
I know this was long description but it is what I remember most from the book. Thanks for everyone's help.
