Promise of the Flame

by Sylvia Engdahl

The Founders of Maclairn duology, Book Two

An adult science fiction novel inapropriate for YA readers

The starship is low on air, and Captain Jesse Sanders is their only pilot. How can he choose a site for a colony with no chance to explore their raw new world? How can he shuttle them all to the surface within a few short hours? And when the site proves less than adequate, how can he live with the knowledge that his own astrogation error was what got them into such a fix?

Three hundred people, isolated forever in the hope of fulfilling a dream, the dream that the psi-based culture they establish will someday shape the future of humankind. If they don't starve first. If they don't lose heart in the face of hardships beyond any they imagined. And if their kids can be reared to believe in the dream and advance both their technology and their psi powers from one generation to the next.

Jesse Sanders hasn't expected to be responsible for the settlement. Peter is the leader, the visionary on whose inspiration they all depend. But Peter has his hands full, not only with maintaining morale but with grueling ordeals of his own. So the job of ensuring the colony's survival falls on Jesse. And in the end, he must stake his life in a desperate attempt to prevent the loss of all they have gained.

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"It is not necessary to read the first [book] in order to be enthralled by the second.." --Indie Reader staff review

"An engaging and suspenseful story." --Mixed Book Bag,

"Engdahl has produced high-quality work over a forty-year period, but this is one of her finest achievements." --Literary critic Nicholas Birns

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Although Promise of the Flame is the second book of the Founders of Maclairn duology, it is complete in itself and can be read alone. It is a very different kind of story from its predecessor, less controversial and more to the taste of readers interested in space colonization, so for many it's the b place to sfart. However, reading it before Stewards of the Flame will spoil some of the suspense of the earlier book, so they should be read in order if you are planning to read both.

Purchase the ebook edition of Promise of the Flame for $2.99 at Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, Smashwords, or Google Play.

Purchase the paperback and/or audiobook edition at Amazon. (The print version can be ordered from other booksellers but at a higher price due to distribution costs.)

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Read an excerpt from the story.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes this novel unsuitable for YA readers?

It wouldn't interest them, as the hero is middle-aged. And it contains some mild sex and profanity (though even less than there is in Stewards of the Flame) to which parents might object, especially since I'm known as a YA author and those familiar with my books don't expect it. It also includes discussions of the connection between sex and telepathy that would be confusing to readers too young to know much about ordinary sex.

There is, however, a stronger reason for not giving this particular novel to kids. There is some content that just isn't appropriate for middle-school readers, who may not fully comprehend the necessary differences between a small isolated colony and our world. In that society, population growth is vital and for various reasons, among them the fact that because they are telepathic, children grow up fast. They are considered adult at 13 and sex at that age is not discouraged--a key event in the plot hinges on the pregnancy of a 14-year-old girl. There is also an incident in which for the protection of the colony a 13-year-old boy is executed for the attempted rape and subsequent murder of a younger child. I have seen reviewers say that this book "should not have been issued as YA," despite the fact that I've done everything in my power to make clear that it was not.

I have even had to contact two libraries to tell them to take it out of the YA category, and since few libraries have it at all, this suggest that it's widely assumed that anything with my name on it must be okay for kids. It doesn't seem to occur to people that having once written YA novels, I might ever write anything else. So I have to emphasize the fact that my recent books are adult, lest some teacher or parent who comes across one objects and concludes that my actual YA novels may not be good for young readers either. For more detail, about this problem, please read Why My Adult Novels Aren't Suitable for Kids.

Can I read Promise of the Flame without having read Stewards of the Flame?

Yes, though you should read Stewards first if you plan to read both since backstory included in Promise contains major spoilers for it. Stewards is a controversial book and some readers don't agree with its negative view of the medical establishment, which is described at this site as well as in the reviews at Amazon and elsewhere. So they either don't want to read it, or read it and don't like it. I hope these readers won't fail to read Promise because they assume that it's similar. Though it refers to the medical issues, it does not focus on them--it's mostly about the hardships of establishing a colony on a raw new planet. If you're interested in space colonization you won't want to miss it.

Why do you avoid calling the five Flame novels a series and refer only to a duology, "The Founders of Maclairn," and a trilogy, "The Captain of Estel"?

Because Defender of the Flame and its sequels Herald of the Flame and Envoy of the Flame are a separate story that has a different hero from the two preceding books and takes place 200 years later; it doesn't depend on having read them, nor does it deal with medical issues. Each group should be read in order (though each of the five books can stand alone), but the only disadvantage to starting with the trilogy is that the included backstory would spoil some of the suspense of the earlier books if you plan to read them all. Yet few readers want to start with a book labeled No. 3 or No. 4 in a series. Also, it's generally impossible to get reviewers to read a book that is not the first in its series. And finally, the trilogy is less unsuitable for young teens than the two earlier books.

Ordinarily authors promote the first book in a series, often making it free, in order to encourage people to read the following books. In my case this backfired, though it couldn't have been avoided because Stewards of the Flame was published first. Stewards has a controversial premise, and it's slower-moving than most of my novels, and so many of its readers didn't like it well enough to go on to the later books. If I had written Promise of the Flame or Defender of the Flame first I would have a much larger audience.

Why did you change the series name from "The Hidden Flame" to "The Founders of Maclairn"?

`The orginal series names "The Hidden Flame" and "The Rising Flame" were the only labels I could think of when i wanted to make plain that the four (now five) "Flame" novels are two separate stories that are quite different and some readers will prefer the second set. But they were not very interesting series names. Recently it occurred to me that "The Captain of Estel" would give a better idea of what the trilogy is about -- Book One is about the hero's youth before he acquired the starship Estel, Book Two is about his life as its captain, and Book Three is about the impact of his legacy on humankind after his death in old age. So I also had to think of a name for the duology Stewards of the Flame and Promise of the Flame although its two books aren't as similar to each other. "The Founders of Maclairn" doesn't give much idea of the story but at least indicates that it's set in a different era.

Will there ever be less expensive paperback editions of these books?

Unfortunately, no. They are print-on-demand books, which are costly to produce, and are priced as low as they can be without giving me less royalty per copy than the ebook editions. The ebooks are priced at only $2.99. If you don't want the Kindle or epub editions you can get pdf editions at Google Play that are formatted as exact images of the printed pages.