Once described as “our county's leading writer in this field”*,
Christchurch sci-fi writer Ged Maybury effectively disappeared after 15 years
and 12 successful children's books – two of which made the finals of the NZ
Children's Book of the Year Awards (1994, 2001).
Now he is back with his most ambitious project to date: a
six-book / 800,000-word Steampunk series set upon a bizarre “alt-Earth” where
Britain is a vast mat of hovering “skylands”, America is still a British
colony, and steamships have more in common with flying saucers than anything
else.
Drawing upon a long apprenticeship of producing well-polished
best-sellers for Scholastic, Harper Collins and Cape Catley, he now turns up
the steam (and the adult content) on a multitude of delightfully detailed
fantasy/steampunk settings riddled with mad scientists, villains, dangerous
and/or attractive antagonists and a sad series of intense (sometimes steamy)
love affairs.
'Across the Stonewind Sky' is the series title and each book
advances our straight-laced British hero deeper into various kinds of steaming
do-do the moment he flies into a curious zone called The Storm's Domain
– where airships rule, and Britain doesn't. It's the Victorian era writ large,
but it's not just a man's world. Rodney is constantly thrown into the company
of a series of competent purposeful women, some of them … how to say this: 'are
on the villain spectrum'. Maybury has already earned praise for his female
characters.
The first two books; 'Across the Stonewind Sky'** & 'Into
the Heart of Varste' are now available at:
As an re-introductory offer, he has priced Book One at $0.00.
Book Two at the normal price of $2.99. Book Three: “Hoverrim the Hunted” is due
out in early June. A digital edition only.
Books 4, 5 & 6 should all be out by the end of 2019 with a
second series planned.
* “He is our county's
leading writer in this field, and with 'The Triggerstone' he's at his best”
– William Taylor, cira 1994.
** Originally released
2014 as “Into the Storm's Domain” by now-defunct Satalyte Books. Print-edition
paperbacks can still be found. Already a rare book.
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