Full brass fanfare for Kelly Jennings, whose riveting space opera Fault Lines lifts off today!
This tense tale of adventure and conflict will be irresistible to readers of Melissa Scott, Aliette de Bodard and C. J. Cherryh. Exploring the issues of genetic engineering as they play into interstellar power politics, rife with complex and shifting alliances, with flawed, vivid protagonists for whom the reader comes to care deeply, Fault Lines is Firefly meets GATTACA with a soupçon of Hunger Games. Those who read The Other Half of the Sky may recall meeting the protagonists in “Velocity’s Ghost”. The premise of Fault Lines:
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?
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). The dynamic, eloquent cover is by Ciaran Gaffney.
Fault Lines received terrific reviews in Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and from SF legend Gwyneth Jones and Ditmar award winner Tansy Rayner Roberts (and nabbed today’s spot at Scalzi’s Big Idea). Review excerpts:
In this fun, intrigue-laden space opera, // Jennings gives an intriguing glimpse of a much larger setting. // Fans of found family will love the portrayal of Velocity and her crew of scrappy underdogs. — Publishers Weekly
Kelly [Jennings] has been compared with C. J. Cherryh, and I think deservedly. Fault Lines isn’t burdened with the awful angst of Cherryh’s [] Cyteen, but it has the same intensity and conviction. — Gwyneth Jones, author of the Aleutian trilogy, winner of the World Fantasy, Clarke, Dick, and Tiptree awards
More political intrigue and gamesmanship than a standard space-battle story… // Solid world building, likable characters…nifty plot twists… — Craig Clark, Booklist
A sharp, character-rich space opera packed with angry, capable women and attractive, vulnerable men. Jennings builds a large, politically complex world // but expresses this through an intimate slice… — Tansy Rayner Roberts, author of the Creature Court trilogy, winner of multiple Ditmar and WSFA Small Press awards
Fault Lines is available on Amazon, B&N, Kobo – and of course on our website, where buying the lovingly prepared trade paperback also brings along the full digital bundle (PDF, Epub and Mobi) . All C&G ebooks are DRM-free. As a reminder, it may take a couple of days post-launch for full linkage between print and digital versions on Amazon and B&N.
Come explore Fault Lines with us; sail the perilous skies of the Pirian/Combine ‘verse with genetic outlaws and hierarchy subverters!
