About this ebook
Cassian Vale has spent forty-two years among them — a councillor's son with a comfortable life, a spectacular view, and a talent for not asking the questions that matter. But when a stranger leaves a data chip in an empty chamber, Cassian learns that his father's latest proposal to "rationalise" the 1.4 billion people living in the Sprawl below is only half the plan. The other half has been quietly under construction for nineteen months, trailing the station in silent orbit.
They call it the Cradle. And not everyone was meant to reach it.
Dropped from the station with no identity, no contacts, and no map, Cassian must survive the very world he spent a lifetime ignoring — the tiered Sprawl with its underground networks, its black-market economies, and the people who keep it running precisely because no one in power has bothered to notice them. With the help of Maren, a fiercely practical facility manager; Fetch, a teenage guide who knows every tunnel in the system; and Sable, a data-runner piecing together a picture that could shake the entire orbital hierarchy — Cassian has seventy-two hours to expose the truth before forty million people disappear from the world without a trace.
A propulsive, morally urgent science fiction novel about power, visibility, and what we owe the world we choose not to see.
Perfect for readers of N.K. Jemisin, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Becky Chambers.
