By day, Ida is a quiet, standoffish maid in the employ of spoiled Lucinda Belmonte. By night, she is the infamous sneak thief known as the Rat Prince, terrorising the wealthy inhabitants of Loxport; especially Lucinda’s lecherous suitor, Lord Devon Casterbury.
Soon the boundaries between her dual lives begin to blur, as her mask begins to drop around a delightful waitress and a charming jeweller who both insist on befriending Ida. All the while she is thrust into a conflict surrounding new and dangerous materials that could upend the order of the city, land her behind bars or in Lord Casterbury’s employ.
A thrilling romp through the Steampunk city of Loxport, Clockwork Magpies is a story of found family, crimes plotted over tea and scones, and the sinister power of glowing gemstones.
It was a world of sword and sorcery, but that was a thousand years ago.
The last elves live on reservations. Dwarven forges have turned to clockwork and steam. Drow emerge from their underground city not to raid, but for trade and diplomacy. New technologies and advanced magics have made the world smaller, safer, richer, and more polluted; dungeon delving can only be done with the proper permits. Paladins, the great warriors endowed by the gods themselves with power to drive back evil, have not been seen in decades. The Age of Adventures is over.
Until it suddenly begins again.
Without warning, the gods call forth two new paladins...into a world at peace where there are no demons to slay, and the bureaucrats and industrialists who run the world are less happy to see them than the kings and queens of old. In a cramped landscape of complicated politics where adventurers are no longer welcome, what are the mighty warriors of the gods even supposed to do?
Well, first, they're sent to school. And it all goes downhill from there.
An AI sworn to protect humanity, stranded on a world of magic and monsters, ready to unleash the fury of the universe on those who would threaten her humans.
Sapphiria was performing her duties as a fleet admiral of the Terran Federation, leading a goodwill tour of the fringe worlds, when she was caught in a hyperspace anomaly.
She now finds herself crashlanded on a foreign world of magic and monsters. She is cut off from all reinforcements, with nothing but the contents of her escape pod and her expertise as one of the best engineers to ever serve the Navy to help her. Luckily, she is an Artificial Intelligence, though she retains much of the humanity from the digitalized brains and AI fragments her consciousness was forged from, and her escape pod is not just a glorified lifeboat, but a miniature factory, equipped with the means and knowledge to build an entire colony from scratch.
However, she soon finds herself before a problem: humans, or 'squishies', as most AIs in the Federation call them, at least where their charges can't hear them. Squishies surviving under the threat of an undead invasion, slaughtering everything and everyone they come across, a horror born out of the fall of a powerful Empire of necromancers, that now threatens the entire world.
It will be their funeral.
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Important Note : Those of you who have read my The Fallen World novel series may recognize some familiar names from Earth. No, both stories are not set in the same universe. A more detailed explanation will be posted in a lore file after chapter 7 is out.
Schedule :
Chapters will be posted once a week on Sundays, at 18h06 CET.
The origin of the Elric Brothers! Once, Edward and Alphonse Elric were willing to do anything to become alchemists. But when they tried to use their newfound skills to resurrect their dead mother, they broke a taboo and encountered something more terrifying than death itself. Now, hardened by years of military training, Edward and Alphonse have returned to the woman who first taught them alchemy...but can she help them, or even forgive them?
She remembered how it felt to lose Salma, first to the wiles of the Butterfly-kinden girl, then to hear the news of his death, abandoned and alone in the midst of the enemy. She remembered how it felt to see her father hacked to death before her eyes. But of her murder of Achaeos, of the bite of her blade into his unsuspecting flesh, the wound that had sapped him and ruined him until he died, she remembered nothing, felt nothing. In such a vacuum, how could she possibly atone? Tynisa is running, but she cannot escape the demons of her own mind. Amidst the fragmenting provinces of the Dragonfly Commonweal her past will at last catch up with her. Her father’s ghost is hunting her down. At the same time, the Wasp Empress, Seda, is on the move, her eyes on the city of Khanaphes, the fallen jewel of the ancient world. Whilst her soldiers seek only conquest, she sees herself as the heir to all the old powers of history, and has her eyes on a far greater prize.
Adventure! Romance! Mad Science! Deep in the heart of the damaged machine that is Castle Heterodyne, Agatha discovers her mother's long-abandoned secret laboratory. But waiting inside is a relentless guardian that is not what it seems!
All good things come to an end. And this is it: the last stand of the Ketty Jay and her intrepid crew.
They've been shot down, set up, double-crossed and ripped off. They've stolen priceless treasures, destroyed a ten-thousand-year-old Azryx city and sort-of-accidentally blew up the son of the Archduke. Now they've gone and started a civil war. This time, they're really in trouble.
As Vardia descends into chaos, Captain Frey is doing his best to keep his crew out of it. He's got his mind on other things, not least the fate of Trinica Dracken. But wars have a way of dragging people in, and sooner or later they're going to have to pick a side. It's a choice they'll be staking their lives on. Cities fall and daemons rise. Old secrets are uncovered and new threats revealed.
The islands of Caldera are a shining jewel in a rather bleak world. A terrible calamity in the past had blanketed much of the world with a toxic "fug." Those who survived were forced to take to the mountains and the skies in wondrous airships. Life has since been a struggle, with only the most ruthless and crafty able to survive. To spare themselves the same fate, the Calderans erected a battery of guns to fend off the airships of the mainland. They isolated themselves from the madness of the world, choosing instead to focus on the pursuits of art and creativity. Few believe the technologically advanced but socially barbarous outsiders have anything to offer. Amanita Graus, though, is hoping that they do.
Nita's mother has lost her livelihood and perhaps soon her life to a terrible disease. Already the black sheep of the family for embracing engineering rather than art, Nita resolves to leave the safety of her home and do whatever it takes to find a cure. For a price, the bizarre crew of an airship called The Wind Breaker are willing to grant her a meeting with their mysterious benefactors, and thus a chance to procure the one thing with a chance to save her mother. Free-Wrench follows Nita’s adventures in a steampunk world of airships and lunatics. Helping her in her journey are an eccentric crew of smugglers; the gruff Cap’n Mack, the simple but enthusiastic Lil and Coop, the arrogant marksman Gunner, the surly surgeon Butch, and the irritable mascot Wink. To survive and find what she seeks she’ll need to earn their trust, follow their rules, and meet face to face with the people who pull the strings of their society.
Alek and Deryn are abroad the Leviathan when the ship is ordered to pick up an unusual passenger. This brilliant/maniacal inventor claims to have a weapon called Goliath that can end the war. But whose side is he really on?
While on their top-secret mission, Alek finally discovers Deryn's deeply kept secret. Two, actually. Not only is Deryn a girl disguised as a guy...she has feelings for Alek.
The crown, true love with a commoner, and the destruction of a great city all hang on Alek's next--and final--move.
The thunderous conclusion to Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series, which was called "sure to become a classic" (SLJ).
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