Orpheus: A thrilling science fiction tale from the Philip K. Award-winning author

From the bestselling M. R. Carey, winner of the Philip K. Award, comes an epic and exhilarating science fiction tale about a distant colony planet at war with itself – where one half is forever in sunlight and the other in endless night.

HUMANITY CAN’T SURVIVE THE NIGHTSIDE

On the distant colony world of Tessix, the sun never moves in the sky. One side of the planet burns under endless noon, whilst the other is a frozen wasteland in perpetual darkness. Human life is only possible in a narrow strip of land where the terraforming project almost worked.

Growing up on the borderland between light and dark, under the fading sun globes of Tanner’s Hook, fifteen-year-old Bead Plessey clings to his friends and his fantasies. Bead dreams of one day escaping the grim realities of life on Tessix – the declining population, the ruthless autocracy of the Noonday government, and the monstrous Daspa that come out of the nightside to feed on human blood.

When a stranger turns up at Bead’s home asking for lodgings, he brings the possibility of change. But who is Jud Valery, and where has he come from? Is his interest in Bead benign or sinister? And how is he connected to the disappearance of Bead’s mother, Omrid, eight years before? Looking for answers, Bead assembles an ill-assorted band of allies – but their investigation takes them far beyond Tanner’s Hook, into the nightside and into the long-buried secrets that shaped their world.

Discover this thrilling standalone science fiction novel from M. R. Carey, author of the Philip K. Dick Award-winning Outlaw Planet and Infinity Gate (a New York Times Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of the Year), perfect for fans of Adrian Tchaikovsky, Alasdair Reynolds and Peter F. Hamilton.

Praise for M. R. Carey:

‘AN IMMENSE ACHIEVEMENT: AN IMPECCABLY CRAFTED BOOK’ New York Times

‘A GENUINE TREAT FOR SF FANS’ Kirkus

‘A FASCINATING WINDOW ONTO A DANGEROUS AND MULTIFACETED UNIVERSE’ Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Children of Time