Candlemark followers know I have a powerful affinity for non-clichéd space opera. So it should come as no surprise that one of the writers I’ve had my eye on is Kelly Jennings, whose Pirian/Combine stories unfold in a vast, intricate universe that begs to be explored.
Those of you who read The Other Half of the Sky may recall Kelly’s’ story “Velocity’s Ghost” that won an honorable mention in The Year’s Best Science Fiction 31. Velocity and her chosen family kept their hold in Kelly’s imagination. In Fault Lines we get to share their adventures and stark choices, and see the jagged cracks in their societies:
Velocity Wrachant, owner and captain of the merchant starship Susan Calvin, is broke and stranded on a Drift station, when she is offered what seems like a simple job: to escort young Brontë Ikeda into Republic space and help her retrieve several bonded-labor children.
While Velocity is tempted by the fee Brontë offers – which is enough to clear her debts – she also knows that Ikeda House, a powerful Combine, just had a major coup; and both she and her crew suspect the story they’re being told by the Combine child is not the whole story.
Velocity takes the gig, but it takes her into the heart of Combine territory, a place she fled almost twenty years earlier. What is the price she and her shipmates may end up paying for this job?
We’re delighted to reveal the cover for Fault Lines, by the hugely talented Ciaran Gaffney. Kelly says that Brontë and Velocity look exactly as she imagines them, and there’s no doubt it eloquently portrays the complex conflicts of the story.
Raised in New Orleans, Kelly Jennings is a member and co-founder of the Boston Mountain Writers Group. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues, including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and The Other Half of The Sky. Her first novel, Broken Slate, was published in 2011 and she co-edited the anthology Menial: Skilled Labor in SF (2012).
We expect to show Fault Lines to the world in June of this year. Keep this frequency open!
