New Series by NZ writer Ged Maybury
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: https://www.draft2digital.com/book/430352#promotion
https://www.draft2digital.com/book/430394#promotion
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.
[ * William Taylor. A beautiful soul; R.I.P.]
[ ** Exactly as the 2014 paperback: “Into the Storm’s Domain” by Satalyte Books]
Ged Maybury :: Steamed Up 