It Takes Death to Reach a Star
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
WE ALL HAVE DEMONS. SOME DEMONS HAVE YOU.
The world you know is dead. We did this to ourselves.
The epidemic struck at the end of the Third World War. Fighting over oil, power, and religion, governments ignored the rise of an antibacterial-resistant plague. In just five years, the Earth was annihilated. Only one city survived—Etyom—a frozen hellhole in northern Siberia, engulfed in endless conflict.
The year is 2251.
Two groups emerged from the ashes of the old world. Within the walled city of Lower Etyom dwell the Robusts—descendants of the poor who were immune to the New Black Death. Above them, in a metropolis of pristine platforms called lillipads, live the Graciles—the progeny of the superrich, bio-engineered to resist the plague.
Mila Solokoff is a Robust who trades information in a world where knowing too much can get you killed. Caught in a deal gone bad, she's forced to take a high-risk job for a clandestine organization hell-bent on revolution.
Demitri Stasevich is a Gracile with a dark secret—a sickness that, if discovered, will get him Ax'd. His only relief is an illegal narcotic produced by the Robusts, and his only means of obtaining it is a journey to the arctic hell far below New Etyom.
Thrust together in the midst of a sinister plot that threatens all life above and below the cloud line, Mila and Demitri must master their demons and make a choice—one that will either salvage what's left of the human race or doom it to extinction ...
AwardsBronze Winner — 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards — Science FictionGold (1st Place) Winner — 2019 Feathered Quill Book Awards — Science Fiction/FantasyFinalist — 2018 Dragon Awards — Science FictionWinner — 2018 New York Book Festival — Science Fiction
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The first collaboration between Jones and Worthington (the Action of Purpose trilogy) is a reasonably standard postapocalyptic dystopian work. Thanks to a one-two apocalyptic punch of war and disease, most of the world is uninhabitable; only one remote area of Siberia remains a place where humans can live. Dystopia fans looking for the usual tropes a highly unequal future society, protagonists from each half thrown together, machinations by the dictator in charge, etc. will get all that, explained in straight-up exposition dumps by the two narrators (Demitri, a member of the genetically modified elite Graciles, and Mila, a scavenger and member of the tough but poor Robusts) and in ponderous conversations between characters telling each other what they both know. There are a few interesting twists involving Vedmak, a second personality inside Demitri who might represent a failure of the bioengineering and culling that the Graciles practice, but the limitations and sheer grunginess of the setting keep the story solidly predictable. Readers looking for innovation in worldbuilding or characters will be disappointed.
