With his career as a fighter pilot ended, Akuleh—Ku to his friends—is accepted into training for the Qaletaqa, the fulfillment of his childhood ambition. Once a territorial militia on Ku’s home world, the Qaletaqa are now the most sought-after special operations force in the galaxy’s Lesser Arm.
The training regime is brutal, but Ku is motivated by his duty to his friend, King Mogen, who vanished when the enemy Supremacy occupied his world, Solienne. Ku is grateful for his ability to endure, gained through earlier hardships, and his experience as a squadron commander to lead his fellow trainees, even with a devastating personal situation developing at home.
Then a volcano erupts on the island where Ku’s group is training, and their intense exercise scenario is replaced by a real-world rescue operation. Separated from half the instruction group, and with their lead mentor injured, it falls to Ku to evacuate the wounded civilians before their village is consumed by lava, and before a traitor in the ranks betrays Ku.
Now available in audio!
Now available from Chris Kennedy Publishing!
The art was created by James A. Owen
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“Running from the Gods is a splendid melding of fantasy and science fiction in one fascinating future of humans on a distant planet. Ku, escaping from a hostile family situation, joins the military when he’s still underage. As a student, he draws on his experience in hand-to-hand combat and his notable skill as a bush pilot.
Read has always had the gift of bringing us inside the mind and heart of her characters, and it is on perfect display in this first of six volumes. Ku is worried that he is being pushed into serving a particularly dangerous and malevolent god, who may require him to become a monstrous human being. Yet he refuses to hide from his own future. He will simply do his best to become the soldier and leader that humanity needs him to be, while trying to hold on to his honor and decency.”
– Orson Scott Card
Now available in audio!
Akuleh—Ku to his friends—begins his combat pilot career fighting an overwhelming enemy, the Supremacy, which is advancing swiftly through the galaxy and capturing one ally world after another.
Machitew, death demon of his people’s ancient tales, continues to wrestle for control of Ku’s destiny, tormenting him with prescient glimpses of losing his fellow pilots in combat—pilots Ku has no way to save.
Then, battling enemies both in space and in his soul, Ku has an encounter that will alter not only his role in the war but change the course of his life.
Now available in audio!
Akuleh—Ku to his friends—thought his life would get a little easier after he learned his destiny wasn’t inescapably bound to his people’s death demon, Machitew.
Then the enemy Supremacy gains a new ally that pushes Resistance Pact forces into a two-front war across the galaxy. To halt the enemy’s advance and liberate a captured world, Ku’s unit, the 15th Aerospace Combat Wing, deploys to a planet aptly named for the destination of condemned souls.
Combat losses and personal commitments lead to new responsibilities on and off duty, but it doesn’t take Ku long to learn that the greatest burden of leadership will come with his true destiny, the one revealed months earlier on a stormy mountain.
Now available in audio!
The attack by the Resistance Pact’s deployed 15th Aerospace Combat Wing on the enemy Supremacy’s “ally” world, Jassem, has succeeded in taking the Jax out of the fight—for now. As the newly appointed commander of the 15th’s 1st Fighter Squadron, however, Ku makes preparing his pilots for the next inevitable battle his top priority.
But with the competition cleared by the destruction of its supposed ally Jassem, the Supremacy swoops in on Solienne, the Resistance Pact’s homeworld, proving Ku’s instincts correct. With its defense forces scattered to protect its own threatened allies, Solienne falls hard and fast. Its deployed units, including the 15th ACW on Tobe, are left to fend for themselves.
In the aftermath of a fierce battle at Tobe, Ku learns his piloting career with the Soli Aerospace Forces is over. He has a new career with the Qaletaqa, his people’s revered special operations force, to look forward to. But first he must learn to bear the far greater weight of becoming Wanikiya, the long-awaited Preserver of His People.
Now available in audio!
Darcie was taking her young child Tristan to rejoin her husband Lujan in the Enach system when nonhuman slavers attacked and captured their transport. Darcie escaped with Tristan in a lifepod and touched down on Ganwold, a primitive planet controlled by their long-time enemy. Unfortunately, due to a malfunction in the lightskip drive, they’d also accidentally jumped several years forward in time and can’t expect to be rescued, so Tristan grows to manhood hiding among the alien ganan.
But when Darcie contracts a lingering, life-threatening illness, Tristan and his gan “brother” Pulou set out on a quest to find the father Tristan never knew, and they are faced with technology they’ve never seen. Captured and turned over to the Sector General, Tristan is used as a bargaining chip in the ongoing war.
Now Admiral Lujan Sergey must figure out a way to counter the impending attack, while realizing he could lose the family he’s just learned is still alive.
Scifi master David Drake called it: “A boy raised by savages comes of age in the midst of interstellar war—fast action and characters you can care about.”
Coming soon in audio!
Reunited with his family, Tristan, the hero of Ganwold’s Child, struggles to find common ground to build a relationship with Lujan Sergey, commander of the Unified Worlds’ special forces and the father he’s never known. A new universe is beginning to open for him when a new crisis occurs, and Tristan is pressed to volunteer for hazardous service. The alien masuk slavers are about to attack the Issel system and only Tristan, once held captive there, knows the planetary defenses well enough to penetrate them.
In Echoes of Issel, Read expands and deepens both the personal relationships of this military family and the social and political structures of the Unified Worlds as a new war threatens.
“Read handles action-adventure scenes with that rare mixture of poise and authority, grace and grittiness, which leaves a reader breathless, heart-pounding, wholly caught up in the story. There is a balance few writers achieve—she neither glorifies the violence nor denies the glory due to courage and honor.”
—Elizabeth Moon
Coming Soon in Audio!
Admiral Lujan Sergey is commander-in-chief of the Unified World’s special forces, the Spherzah. When the new government of former enemy world, Issel, requests assistance from the Unified Worlds (UW) to repel an invasion by masuk slavers, the negotiations become contentious. An assassin strikes during the treaty signing and Lujan is critically injured. The damage to his central nervous system leaves him with nothing but his still keen mind.
While Lujan devises a way to communicate with his wife, Captain Darcie Dartmuth, and his medical team, and struggles to regain everything he’s lost, he’s removed from command. Issel’s new chief cabinet minister aspires to restore the old Dominion and bring the UW under its subjugation. Only Lujan knows the full extent of the Isselan corruption in the highest levels of the UW government. He must rely on Darcie and his son, Tristan, to help gather the evidence he needs to thwart the Isselan minister’s plan, while fighting the most difficult battle of his life.
When Lujan discovers that one UW conspirator is on to him, his mission becomes a race. Can he reveal the plot in time, or will other assassins be sent to finish the job? In Tentacles of the Dominion, Read spins a tale of complex intrigue and espionage.
Available from Chris Kennedy Publishing!
Coming Soon in Audio!