Trellis - by A H Ostmo (Paperback)

About the Book

Where no sunlight shines, Gia stares at surveillance screens to keep everyone safe. But when a girl disappears, Gia ventures into dangerous waters. Searching for truth, she risks everything to unravel a tangle of deception.

Book Synopsis

6 minutes and 32 seconds- that's the average time it takes a person to get through the food line and exit the room. Gia Hamiltoni calculates every move, every voice inflection, every second. Living 6,000 feet under the sea, there is no way in or out of the Trellis Facility. Where no sunlight shines, Gia and her workmate, Leal, stare at the surveillance screens to keep everyone safe. But when a girl disappears, Gia ventures into dangerous waters. Searching for truth, she risks everything to unravel a tangle of deception.

What is Gia up against?

Monsters outside.

Accidents inside.

The Trellis Facility can't be the way humans were meant to live.

With her father, Garridon Hamiltoni, as the Head of security, Gia was trained to keep the community safe. She knows that audio surveillance is difficult to understand when too many people speak at once, which is why the community members are discouraged from speaking in the corridors. She knows that certain words- like Alaster- trigger the artificial intelligence systems to listen closer to the conversation.

The suffocating control can't withstand the weight of questions about what happened to the girl who disappeared. Searching for truth, Gia uncovers the mess of deception around the mythical submarine, called Alaster, which could provide a chance to leave the Trellis.

Lurk in through the Trellis Facility that has tighter government control than Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. Experience action with Gia and her friends as their adventures take more turns than Michael Scott'sThe Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel.

In the first book of the Alaster Trilogy, A. H. Ostmo shapes an underwater world that explores belief systems and challenges worldviews. With microbial-based systems and energy from hydrothermal vents, the Trellis facility is located in one of the most extreme environments in the universe. No sunlight, shadowy creatures, and more pressure than a human can withstand- what better setting to examine the internal conflicts of the human mind?

Review Quotes

"Once started, the story keeps you locked into the mysteries and secrets being hinted at the beginning up through the heart racing moment of life and death for characters you grow to love and know, and up until the final scene where A. H. Ostmo finally takes you from anxious hurry to relief in a moment. She creates a technologically advanced and enclosed underwater world with a faction system much like the feel of the atmosphere of the Divergent series, friends within factions, feuds between, family heartache within and across, and resistance to the system's deceitful and life taking ways. I would recommend to everyone who loves an emotionally engaging sci-fi."

"Step into the Trellis and journey with Gia as she finds herself in the middle of a mystery that will cause her to question all she has known.

The author skilfully crafts the world that her characters inhabit and I found myself immersed in their underwater home as the story unfolds, balancing action with bigger questions. Highly recommend this book and can't wait to read the rest of the trilogy!"