Empress of Forever

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By Max Gladstone

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Publisher Description

From the co-author of the viral New York Times bestseller This is How Your Lose the Time War.

“A classic space opera...a universe we’ve never seen before.” —Delilah S. Dawson, New York Times bestselling author

From Hugo Award finalist Max Gladstone comes a smart, swashbuckling, wildly imaginative adventure; the saga of a rag-tag team of brilliant misfits, dangerous renegades, and enhanced outlaws in a war-torn future.

A wildly successful innovator to rival Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Vivian Liao is prone to radical thinking, quick decision-making, and reckless action. On the eve of her greatest achievement, she tries to outrun people who are trying to steal her success.

In the chilly darkness of a Boston server farm, Viv sets her ultimate plan into motion. A terrifying instant later, Vivian Liao is catapulted through space and time to a far future where she confronts a destiny stranger and more deadly than she could ever imagine.

The end of time is ruled by an ancient, powerful Empress who blesses or blasts entire planets with a single thought. Rebellion is literally impossible to consider--until Vivian Liao arrives. Trapped between the Pride—a ravening horde of sentient machines—and a fanatical sect of warrior monks who call themselves the Mirrorfaith, Viv must rally a strange group of allies to confront the Empress and find a way back to the world and life she left behind.

A magnificent work of vivid imagination and universe-spanning action, Empress of Forever is a feminist Guardians of the Galaxy crossed with Star Wars and spiced with the sensibility and spirit of Iain M. Banks and William Gibson.

“Empress of Forever is tense and vast, complex and twisty, a space opera epic that’s a lot faster on the draw than Star Wars or Star Trek ever dreamed of being. But at its core, it’s an epic about the value of empathy and the importance of compassion. It’s amazingly good.”—Locus

“With Empress of Forever, Max Gladstone’s remarkable talent is operating at full stretch, demonstrating the strength, power, and originality at his command. This unique and propulsive novel yields a deep, cellular-level enchantment filled at every turn with curiosity and delight.”—Peter Straub

“Empress of Forever is a story that will make you weep with wonder. The whole book is filled with the kind of snark that I love and an endless majesty of stars. It broke me to pieces and then stitched me back together with golden thread. Simply glorious.”—K.B. Wagers, author of Behind the Throne

“Galaxy-saving space opera with cool original settings and a unique band of adventurers that change each other for the better. It was a wild ride and I really enjoyed it.”—Martha Wells, Hugo Award-winning author of The Murderbot Diaries

“Incorporates wonder and wit to create a feminist, humanist playground. Introduces one mind-blowing concept after another, capitalizing on the concept of personal power while candidly addressing personal failure. This feast for the imagination intelligently captures the complexities of a variety of relationships in an adrenaline-fueled series of escapades and will leave readers both exhausted and elated.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A fantastic tale of adventure on the grandest scale of epic space opera, spanning galaxies full of battles and traps as well as trade and negotiation, all told with humor as the crew seeks allies, weapons, and ships to fight back against The Empress to save the galaxy—and so Viv can find her way home.”—Booklist, starred review

“Vivian is an amazing woman: with no more than her sharp wit in a universe of AIs and enhanced beings, she still ends up being the key to the truth. Gladstone's epic space opera and fast-paced adventure will thrill readers.”—Library Journal, starred review

Also Available by Max Gladstone:

The Craft Sequence
1. Three Parts Dead
2. Two Serpents Rise
3. Full Fathom Five
4. Last First Snow
5. Four Roads Cross
6. Ruin of Angels

The Craft Wars
1. Dead Country
2. Wicked Problems

Last Exit
Empress of Forever

This is How You Lose the Time War (with Amal El-Mohtar)

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

5 Reviews

4.0

Didi

Created over 4 years ago

“Max Gladstone's writing is brilliant. It is brilliant in the literal sense, of being luminescent. It is brilliant in the sense that it is very smart. It is brilliant in the English colloquial sense of being really cool. All of this has been evident in his previous work, and may be even more evident in this. Empress of Forever is a perfect encapsulation of modern day space opera. It is wild, but it is smart. It has oodles of action, but also wonderful characters. There are bits of it that one cannot fully make sense of, but that's okay, because it's future super tech, and there's no way we could. Space opera science is different than super hero comics science. In that it's closer to actual science. But it takes the extrapolation of science fiction and then takes a wild leap. This novel is like an ogre. Or like an onion. It's got layers, is what I'm saying here. Layers of plot and character. Most of its characters aren't human in any way we'd recognize, but they're PEOPLE. And as a reader, I cared about them. You're gonna hear a lot about Zanj from fans of this book, and rightly so. Both because she's super cool and badass and complex, and because you know she's a major character from the second she steps on the page. Some of the other characters, also wonderful, are spoilers. To my fellow readers of the book, I'll say this: How great was that one kid? And how awesome was that other woman? And who knew that... well, yes. Sorry. Spoilers. Just... go read it, would you?”

calicocatkin

Created almost 3 years ago

Jenn Mercer

Created about 4 years ago

Melba Torres Sosa

Created 5 months ago

john shaw

Created over 3 years ago

About Max Gladstone

Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award–winning author, MAX GLADSTONE, has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia and once wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat. He is the author of many books, including Last Exit, Empress of Forever, the Craft Sequence of fantasy novels and, with Amal El-Mohtar, the viral New York Times bestseller This Is How You Lose the Time War. His dreams are much nicer than you’d expect.