Aaron D Phillips

Aaron D Phillips introduced a comic science-fiction trilogy for teen readers with his debut. Toby Smart and the Gift follows sixteen-year-old Toby, a solitary teenager from the Somerset village of Wickerton whose ordinary life begins to fracture through unexplained events. His friendship with Luke comes under pressure while people from Toby’s past and a group of interfering aliens reshape what he understands about himself. Phillips balances the speculative plot with friendship, family strain, and an intentionally chaotic sense of humor. The 2017 release opens the Toby Smart sequence and marked Phillips’s book debut. The author served as publisher for the edition distributed through Draft2Digital, giving the novel an independent publishing context. Later editions retain its teen science-fiction classification and the Toby Smart series name, establishing both its intended readership and its position at the start of a planned three-book story.