Sailor to a Siren is a great debut from Zoë Sumra and establishes her as a name to watch in epic space opera. The depth of her characters, the breadth of her world-building, the ambition and longevity of her story-arcs spanning multiple generations of families, all make this a first step in what is likely to be a fascinating and enthralling universe.
In advance of the release of the eBook, we can now reveal the cover art, created by artist Alison Buck to reflect the action of the story. The Pellites, an Avian race, hold a week-long festival every year that attracts humans and aliens alike, from a thousand light-year radius, to cavort on their planet; not even the underside lords – drug barons, slavers, pimps, racketeers, mob kings and queens – can resist. But the fireworks, music, street-food, beer-tents and ever-increasing piles of litter, can only partially mask the sounds and scents of the inevitable fights. The whine of hydrobike engines, the crack of gunshots, the thud of wingtip plasma bursters, and the smell of electrokinesis, are all indications of gangsters moving in on each other’s deals in the bars, alleys and warehouses. This is where we meet brothers Connor and Logan Cardwain as they steal a shipment of high-grade narcotics on the orders of their gangster boss…
Sailor to a Siren will be published in July in eBook editions and in November in paperback.