The Complete Edition
- Steel City, Veiled Kingdom: The Complete Edition
- Steel City, Veiled Kingdom, Part 1: Surface
- Steel City, Veiled Kingdom, Part 2: Going Underground
- Steel City, Veiled Kingdom, Part 3: Buried
- Steel City, Veiled Kingdom, Part 4: Forces of Attraction
- Steel City, Veiled Kingdom, Part 5: Children of Change
- The Guests of Crooked Neck
- Nosferatu Novel project
- Growing Shadows in the Desert
Gattaca by way of The Fifth Element—and the double life is just the beginning.
Jerimin Icarii's life is over.
Once, he was a brilliant young scientist. Then society declared him dangerous. Now he is homeless, hopeless, and ready to die.
Tonight, high above the steel city, Jerimin closes his eyes and steps toward his death. Then a wild-haired stranger tackles him to the ground.
“Do not,” she says. “I need you.”
She claims to be the Queen of the faerie world. And she offers Jerimin something nobody else will: his life back. The Queen can make him respectable again—at least on paper. In return, Jerimin must do whatever she asks.
Whatever she asks.
He says yes.
Now Jerimin has two lives. The one everyone can see is propped up by the one nobody can know about.
Aboveground, Jerimin must convince the scientific world that rejected him he still belongs among them. One slipup could destroy the life he has barely begun to rebuild.
Belowground, he slips through a secret door and becomes a bizarre Queen’s entire royal court. He brews the tea. Microwaves the dinners. Works the screens. For once, Jerimin seems to be doing something right.
Then the Queen gives him his next assignment: enter the most prestigious scientific institute in the galaxy.
Jerimin has never even been to university.
The Queen gives him until the end of the month to come up with an idea worthy of legend. Jerimin thinks she is wildly overestimating him. The Queen does not.
Soon, getting into the institute will look like the easy part. Jerimin’s inventions will stop fitting neatly inside laboratories. The Queen’s problems will stop fitting neatly underground.
And Jerimin will keep responding to every impossible situation with the same dangerous conviction: There has to be another way.
Jerimin was ready to die with nothing. Now he has a future aboveground, a secret Queen below—and no intention of surrendering either.
A defiant comeback. A dangerous charade. A monstrous friendship. And a genius who keeps insisting reality shouldn’t get the final say.
STEEL CITY, VEILED KINGDOM is a maximalist science-fantasy odyssey about one man’s spectacular refusal to stay down.
You’ll desperately want Jerimin to succeed. Just wait until he does.
I once tried to run into the sea to drown myself, but the water never rose higher than my skinny fourteen-year-old calves.
It didn’t take long before I found the end of the sea, a glass wall at the very edge of the tower. Jets pumped recirculated water through slots aimed at my ankles. I stared through the glass at the steel city before me. If climbed over, I could jump, and if I jumped, I’d fall. I’d close my eyes and pretend I was flying—at least, until the first autokinet smashed into me. It’d be a quick death—the machines never stopped in time—and a better one than the injection in store for me when I failed my final set of tests.
At least this way I get to choose.
My palm had just kissed the glass when my father grabbed me from behind.
I twisted, but he was too strong. He hauled me, his only son, through the water, back to where my mother screamed and people avoided looking at us. My escape had failed.
READ MOREI’d been paying for that day’s cowardice ever since.
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