The Oxford Times - Local Author slot - Mike Philbin's Custodian novel

the Oxford Times has just featured Mike Philbin's new novel CUSTODIAN (Free Planet¹) in their online Local Author slot - click the above image to read the editorial or click the novel title to purchase direct.

The Research Notes of Miss Asalah Al Faghori

this is a 100-page Kindle publication that supplements events in the recently published Custodian (free planet #1) novel.

We meet central character Asalah Al Faghori who not only creates, inspires and manages the Custodian Liberation but is also the genetically enhanced host of the Natural Lottery show that infiltrates the GES or Global Evertainment System.

This digital diary allows us to witness her increasingly warped logical and frighteningly academic solution to the prison-world insanity of what she sees as the Corporate War Machine's ruination of her once-beautiful home world. We see how she comes to understand that only a 'rewilded' world, a 'de-consumerised' world, a 'jail broken' world can save mankind, as a supposed-Custodian race.

The owl-based cover refers back to the Messianic flavour of my 2008 novel Planet of the Owls but also alludes to the Moloch-worshipping i.e. Bohemian Grove's Skull & Bones, ritual symbology that will only really make its presence felt in Liberator (free planet #2) when it's all too late for our young heroine to attempt to rectify.