Diathesis: Descent Book 1

THE STUNNING NEW SERIES FROM DITMAR NOMINEE ISHMAEL A. SOLEDAD
 
DIATHESIS WILL RELEASE INITIALLY AS LTD. EDITION - 500 SIGNED & STAMPED COPIES (INCL. DESIGNED ENDPAPERS + 'ISMUD' SCHEMATICS ARTWORK INSIDE DUSTJACKET)
 
Maria Rodrigues’ parents were not who they seemed, and so the girl is raised apart from them, hiding without understanding. As she grows into adulthood and becomes enthralled by environmental activism, she meets a man whose genius is tempered by his questionable ethics, coming to learn that the lines between what is right and what is necessary are so easily blurred.
 
Philosophy, ethics and science are at odds as a disparate cast of soldiers, technicians and explorers clash in the maelstrom surrounding the Ismud project – Earth’s first crewed interstellar probe. Some will seek validation for past wrongs; others revenge for festering pain; some merely a meaning to their existence; while others will stop at nothing to see their genius brought to life.
 
These lives are mapped with sympathetic immersion, narrating a multivalent trajectory that will see a future cut short as the Ismud launch looms...
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"…told in first person and set in the 22nd century, with children growing up in a variety of different places across the world…Maria is the daughter of militant environmental activists, Li Qao is an unwanted child who reminds his father of his dead mother, and Eight-Nine is a vat-grown human living in a purpose-built training facility…a distinct voice when reading the narration…building everything quite slowly…about humanity’s first venture into interstellar space with a crewed spaceship…a very clear sense of the main characters…we can see how they are on a collision course with one another…the geopolitical balance has shifted…clear lines of ‘them’ and ‘us’ being drawn…a well written start to a longer story. The author clearly has much more to say, and it will be interesting to see how he delivers the next instalment in the Descent series." - Allen Stroud, BSFA Review & Chair of the British Science Fiction Association