On October 9, 2023, Candlemark & Gleam will release Jo Graham’s riveting Fortune’s Favor, the third work in the unfolding space opera linked-stories series The Calpurnian Wars after Sounding Dark and Warlady. The series illuminates conflicts of human cultures flung among the stars that awaken potent mythic avatars of advanced technology that have become indistinguishable from magic. With echoes from the cultures of Minoans, Celts, Romans and Alexander’s epigonoi, Fortune’s Favor is equal parts Taken and Memoirs of a Geisha: seamlessly fusing far past and far future, it cries out for the attention of someone with the talent and flair of Kathryn Bigelow or Denis Villeneuve.

Fortune’s Favor received high praise from genre legend Melissa Scott, Hugo nominee Paul Weimer, and best-selling authors E.K. Johnston and K.V. Johansen; and it boasts a cover by Eleni Tsami, as stunning as all her works. The digital version is available for pre-order at Amazon, B&N and Kobo; and if all goes as it should, the paperback pre-order should also go live by the end of this week or beginning of next week. Here’s its synopsis to whet appetites:

When a Calpurnian faction leader kidnaps the young son of the Guardian of the city of Beira on Menaechmi, it’s up to his gaura, the intrepid Caralys, to find a way to rescue the boy. Getting a child off a Calpurnian warship in orbit safely seems impossible, but Caralys has an ace up her sleeve, a freelance agent named Bister. Bister wants Menaechmi’s support to repeal the Isolation that keeps her people imprisoned on Inanna, and what better way to get it than to have the Guardian owe her a favor? With the help of Boral, a young Morriganian electromancer on Menaechmi for his first port call, Bister lays her plans to trick the Calpurnians out of their prize. But when the Calpurnians threaten the unarmed cities of Menaechmi, the stakes get higher than one boy’s life. The fate of Menaechmi is in play, and Caralys must roll the Golden Lady’s dice to save her family and her world.

Jo Graham is the author of twenty-seven books and three online games. Best known for her historical fantasy novels Black Ships and Stealing Fire, and her tie-in novels for MGM’s popular Stargate: Atlantis and Stargate: SG-1 series, she has been a Locus Award finalist, an Amazon Top Choice, a Spectrum Award finalist, a Romantic Times Top Pick in historical fiction and a Lambda Literary Award and Rainbow Award nominee for bisexual fiction. With Melissa Scott, she is the author of five books in the Order of the Air series, a historical fantasy series set in the 1920s and 30s. She is also the author of three pagan spirituality books.

Because GoodReads giveaways are no longer free and our coffers are of the usual size for indie micro-presses, we will be doing a direct giveaway for Fortune’s Favor. You can enter it by leaving a comment to this post or by sending an email (with subject line “Fortune’s Favor Giveaway”) to our website address. Please rest assured that your email will only be visible to the site admin.

The giveaway will run from September 18 to midnight of October 8, and random winners will be picked to receive copies of the novel. For up to 20 requests, there will be one award copy. For up to 50 requests, two copies; and beyond that, three copies. Because the pandemic and the USPS slowdown have caused significant shipping problems, the giveaway will only award digital copies (it will include the PDF that contains all the print flourishes).

We can hardly wait to share this remarkable work with the world along its linked siblings. Check star charts and scan all frequencies!

Note added on October 9: the giveaway is now closed.  We’ll pick winners and contact them within a week.