The Battle for Mars has been fought and won, and
the False Emperor lies shot in the head
in the ruins of the Red Palace.
The rebellion is over, its purpose apparently complete.
Little were the participants to suspect
it was merely the beginning of a whole new age of suffering and strife,
as the Red Empire shatters into pieces,
and civilisation falls and begins anew.
New alliances, treacheries, aspirations and failures
shape the future of mankind.
The Age of Secession has begun.
Age of Secession wants to entertain, challenge and introduce people to science fiction based on politics, society and real-life concerns, and imaginatively address topics relevant to today whilst telling a gripping story.
Whilst some books come close, very few quite manage to bring the right mix of entertainment with some of the more world-shaking events we experience today. Age of Secession leads the way in showing that you can have a star-spanning operatic drama with some very common human failings and successes with stories not out of place in novels of romance, horror, crime, thriller and suspense, mixing all these genres in the best traditions of imaginative science fiction.
But it also shows that as well as telling a ripping yarn, a gripping story can also deal with serious modern-day issues - such as the strong themes of social inequality and political upheaval amongst others - that ride underneath the plots. Whether you want to just kick back, imagine you were your favourite character and enjoy the tale, or you want to delve deeper into the stories to reflect on the very real things that happen today, occurred in the past, and might feature in the future, Age of Secession is the series that you want to read.
Out Now - Augmented Genocide
OUT IN EBOOK AND PAPERBACK
“They are different than us”.
Those words have echoed throughout time as an excuse for senseless hatred. In the Age of Secession, none of those hatreds are bigger than the antagonism between the unaugmented and the augmented, a senseless disgust borne from the most basic cause for man to turn on himself; fear of the different.
The Zhou-Zheng Compact is one of the new states, an alliance of two noble Houses, extremist humanists with their unmitigated loathing of anyone who has had their body altered using borgite technology. Many Houses come to fall before their onslaught, including the borgite House Erdogan.
As billions of Erdogan refugees escape to the protection of the Mercenary Lord, back at home the Zhou-Zheng Compact have opened their deathcamps and are slowly exterminating their conquered people simply because they are different. They continued their lethal genocide unchecked against more and more borgite-dominated worlds and Houses, and for a while it seemed nothing could stop them.
Not all Erdogans intend to bear this suffering in silence.
Not all Erdogans will simply let their people die.
This is the story of those who fought - against the Genocide of the Augmented.
Out Now - Pay Dirt: Dishonest Intentions
OUT IN EBOOK AND PAPERBACK
Life is tough for many in the Age of Secession, and for some it has become much tougher since the Emperors of House Constantin fell from grace.
Iain Briggs is a con-man, along with friends Dominic Gaiman and Marin Todor. They have moved from trick to trick, from planet to star system to intergalactic House since the Red Empire of Mars fell, each scam being bigger than the last.
The rise of the Vindicate Empire offers them their biggest and most dangerous opportunity yet, as this Fifth Empire looks to build landgates and starterminals across the colonised galaxy in every direction. It will revolutionise space travel, allowing trade to pass from one side of the colonised galaxy to another within a day, rather than in years.
Constructing a pathway across the stars, they will face the jealousies of leaders, the murderous intent of criminals, the hidden and dangerous motives of pirates, the wrath of the security forces of the nations they are working both for and against. This is the biggest job of all, and if any of them are to escape with their lives, they will have to succeed in a way they could not imagine when they started.
Most would see pay dirt as succeeding in one of the biggest construction jobs in mankind’s history. They will see pay dirt as escaping with their lives, from an ever-deepening web of dishonest intentions.
Out Now - The Unchained:
OUT IN EBOOK AND PAPERBACK
Under Imperial Law, slavery in any form has never been illegal. It has always been left to the Houses that ruled the stars to decide for themselves whether they would allow fellow man to be enslaved to another, it being a matter for House Law.
Jebediah Lockwood is an augmented borgite born free to an agricultural family on a world in the deep south of the galaxy. His happy childhood is destroyed when - just as the insurgency against the False Emperor is having its success on distant Mars - the humanists come to his homeworld. So begins a chain of events as seemingly inexorable and unbreakable as the slavery he finds himself living his life within.
In the galactic east a new sport is gaining traction in the chaos following the start of the Age of Secession. It is perfect for a person like Jebediah and those he comes to travel with, those freed from slavery who know how to pilot walkers and have nothing to lose any more.
The Gladiator Games are as vicious as those who fight within them, with death just as likely as victory. They are fighting for high purses if they win, but with equally high stakes if they lose. Jebediah’s prize will be the money to buy his sister’s freedom, a freedom she may not want.
They are free to fight and free to die.
They are the Unchained.