Polystom

Adam Roberts, author of the critically acclaimed 'Salt', returns with his most ambitious and dazzling novel yet.

'I find the very notion of these superb, barren mountains of fire hanging in nothingness - literally nothingness! - to be poetic and engaging to the highest degree.'

Amongst all his uncle Cleonicles' notions, his explanation for the stars has always seemed just too fanciful to be true to Polystom, fiftieth steward of Enting.

Yes, his uncle invented the Computational Device, the Greatest Work of Man, the Summation of Human Knowledge, but surely everyone accepts that the air between the planets is without end. How could there be nothing beyond something? Where would air end and nothing begin?

This is but one certainty in a universe of certainties for the fiftieth Steward of Enting. Polystom is certain his new wife will love him. Certain that his servants respect him. Certain that war will bring him the glory he has been looking for.

The death of his uncle is only the first shock to his comfortable view of life . . .

Adam Roberts has created a vivid, unique universe. One in which autocrats cruise between the planets in biplanes, in which Skywhals make mysterious distant orbits, in which a fruitless war has dragged on for years.

For it to be any other way is, of course, completely impossible . . .