ping read, filled with fascinating characters and sharp, timely, unexpected twists. You'll be thinking about this wonderful debut novel long after you've finished reading it.' Larry Kirwan, Leader of Black 47, writer of Liverpool Fantasy and Rockaway Blue. Conceiver of Paradise Square, now running on Broadway

The Emperor: demented, paranoid, all-powerful. The Sorcerer: obsessed with destroying the monster. The Rebel: the fly in the ointment?

Jeseque Debrone, newly graduated avionics engineer, is eager to make the most of her unexpected post in the Imperial Defence Forces, a position she recognises as the ideal launching pad for her subversive career. Ironically, her transmission of classified information to the rebels in the north results in her inclusion in a top-secret mission. But Jeseque doesn't buy the official line, that she and her crewmates are aboard an interstellar spacecraft, embarking upon a 30-lightyear journey to a sister planet. She believes that the heavily armed craft is in fact a secret weapons platform, with its sights set on the troublesome tribes in the north. The presence of secretive magicians and their unfathomable technologies only serves to increase her mistrust. Destlar, the Eternal Emperor and the focus of Jeseque's hatred, is demented, paranoid and all-powerful. Though he is ignorant of the fact, physical death for him is but a step to omnipotent carnage and chaos. How does one go about destroying such a monster? One magician believes he has the answer, and the interstellar voyage is the culmination of his centuries-long machinations. Jeseque unwittingly steps in the path of the sorcerer's hurtling train, and almost derails it.