A speed of light space adventure novel of a treasure hunt that could unlock all the wonders of a vast and advanced civilization's lost technologies.
For Pyke and his crew it should have been just another heist. Travel to a backwater desert planet, break into a museum, steal a tracking device then use it to find a ship buried in the planet's vast and trackless sandy wastes.
Except that the museum vault is a bio-engineered chamber, and the tracking device is sought-after by another gang of treasure hunters led by an old adversary of Pyke's, the devious Raven Kaligara. Also, the ship is quarter of a million years old and about two kilometres long and somewhere aboard it is the Essavyr Key, a relic to unlock all the treasures and technologies of a lost civilisation . . .
For more from Michael Cobley, check out:
Humanity's Fire
Seeds of Earth
The Ascendant Stars
The Orphaned Worlds
Ancestral Machines
Michael Cobley was born in Leicester, England and has lived in Glasgow, Scotland for most of his life. He has studied engineering, been a DJ and has an abiding interest in democratic politics.
His previous books include the Shadowkings dark fantasy trilogy and Iron Mosaic, a short story collection.
Seeds of Earth,
The Orphaned Worlds,and
The Ascendant Stars,books one, two and three of the Humanity's Fire sequence, were his first full-length forays into space opera. Proper galaxy-spanning Space Opera ... a worthy addition to the genre.
Iain M. Banks onSeeds of Earth The invention is endless.
SFXonSeeds of Earth A well-constructed space opera...a thick and satisfying 10-course meal of starchy pageantry, meaty characterslC¯
![Splintered Suns [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/0/7/4/2_2543678.jpg)