What unforgivable sin would you commit to save the world?
In 2161, the first chimera arose. A year later, twelve billion people were dead. The few who survived called it the Reckoning.
Generations later, their descendants hide within the walls of small, rustic villages, cowering from chimeras. They revere tradition. They fear innovation. They mistrust anything that’s different.
Root couldn’t be more different.
Curious and irreverent, she disquiets her village. Blind daughter of the village guardian, she stands apart. Frustrated with a wall-bound life, she grudgingly accepts it—until she hears the voice that no one else can hear.
Root’s journey will take her into the wilds to discover the truth: that her world has been twisted by people trying to save it. And her choices will determine whether humankind’s last ember flickers out.
What unforgivable sin would you commit to save the world?
In 2161, the first chimera arose. A year later, twelve billion people were dead. The few who survived called it the Reckoning.
Generations later, their descendants hide within the walls of small, rustic villages, cowering from chimeras. They revere tradition. They fear innovation. They mistrust anything that’s different.
Root couldn’t be more different.
Curious and irreverent, she disquiets her village. Blind daughter of the village guardian, she stands apart. Frustrated with a wall-bound life, she grudgingly accepts it—until she hears the voice that no one else can hear.
Root’s journey will take her into the wilds to discover the truth: that her world has been twisted by people trying to save it. And her choices will determine whether humankind’s last ember flickers out.
— Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“[I]mpossible to put down…nothing short of a storytelling masterwork.”
— BlueInk Review (Starred Review)
“[A] fresh and ingenious take on the post-apocalyptic novel…that maintains suspense from its first page to its last.”
— Foreword Clarion Reviews (★★★★★)
“Crafty surprises abound in this debut novel…[P]henomenal worldbuilding.”
— Kirkus Reviews
2020 Foreword Indies Finalist
— Foreword Indies Book of the Year Awards (Science Fiction)
2020 Montaigne Medal Finalist
— Eric Hoffer Book Award (Most Thought Provoking Book)
The People
Root
Excerpt: “Prologue”
My name is Root.
I was seventeen when I first heard the voice no one else could hear. I feared I might have the Nothing within me.
But by the time my village burned me alive in the Pit? By then we were all pretty sure.
Root
Excerpt: “Prologue”
My name is Root.
I was seventeen when I first heard the voice no one else could hear. I feared I might have the Nothing within me.
But by the time my village burned me alive in the Pit?
By then we were all pretty sure.
Ruth Troyer
Excerpt: “Ruth Troyer’s Journal”
Strays came onto our porch today. The same three Eli saw last week, I expect. All skinny with hunger.
They had fancy coats and gloves and colorful hats and scarves and boots that looked expensive under all the dirt. They also had the look of men who sorely missed their screens and desks and electric shavers and twinkling modern gewgaws. I wonder what they were before the economy crumbled. Engineers maybe. Bios. Lawyers. Something well to do.
They asked for food. Eli has forbidden me to give any to strays. They said they’d eaten nothing but dry crabapples in three days. Three days was about right from the hollow look of them. I gave them a loaf of bread and welcomed them to use our well. I apologized it couldn’t be more, said we had little enough for our own.
Their mouths thanked me. Their eyes wanted more.
Ruth Troyer
Excerpt: “Ruth Troyer’s Journal”
Strays came onto our porch today. The same three Eli saw last week, I expect. All skinny with hunger.
They had fancy coats and gloves and colorful hats and scarves and boots that looked expensive under all the dirt. They also had the look of men who sorely missed their screens and desks and electric shavers and twinkling modern gewgaws. I wonder what they were before the economy crumbled. Engineers maybe. Bios. Lawyers. Something well to do.
They asked for food. Eli has forbidden me to give any to strays. They said they’d eaten nothing but dry crabapples in three days. Three days was about right from the hollow look of them. I gave them a loaf of bread and welcomed them to use our well. I apologized it couldn’t be more, said we had little enough for our own.
Their mouths thanked me. Their eyes wanted more.
Morton and Aura Lee
Excerpt: “AT THE END OF ALL THINGS”
Morton waited for her reaction. Any reaction. But Lee stood there, quiet, facing him. Impassive, her head a little to the side.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He had the flickering impression of her in midair and then he was on his back, on the floor. It’s like that when someone has a military-grade naughtwork. Their naughts make them too fast. You can hardly see them coming.
Lee straddled Morton’s chest, all four foot eleven of her, her face puckered in an unfamiliar grimace of rage. With her right hand, she cradled the back of his head almost tenderly, lifting it gently from the floor. Then, in the instant of peace that lay between, he realized: there wasn’t much mass behind her. She was anchoring herself with her own right arm. She was going to make this count.
Then she was pounding him with her left.
Morton and Aura Lee
Excerpt: “AT THE END OF ALL THINGS”
Morton waited for her reaction. Any reaction. But Lee stood there, quiet, facing him. Impassive, her head a little to the side.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He had the flickering impression of her in midair and then he was on his back, on the floor. It’s like that when someone has a military-grade naughtwork. Their naughts make them too fast. You hardly see the attack coming.
Lee straddled Morton’s chest, all four foot eleven of her, her face puckered in an unfamiliar grimace of rage. With her right hand, she cradled the back of his head almost tenderly, lifting it gently from the floor. Then, in the instant of peace that lay between, he realized: there wasn’t much mass behind her. She was anchoring herself with her own right arm. She was going to make this count.
Then she was pounding him with her left.
The World
The main story takes place long after the Reckoning in The World That Is—a region that was once north-central Ohio, and is now bounded by the vast circular canyon of the Void.
Andy Giesler
When Andy was ten years old, he wrote his first book.
Attack of the Dinosaurs was seventeen pages long, variously single- and double spaced, with rough cut cardboard backing and a masking tape and white yarn binding.
It was the heart-pounding tale of Alaskan scientists using nuclear bombs to prospect for gasoline and—as happens all too often—inadvertently waking frozen dinosaurs. Without giving away too much, things didn’t end well for the dinosaurs. (Things never end well for the dinosaurs.)
He fell in love with writing and promised himself that, one day, he’d write an even longer book.
Then, one evening many years later while reading bedtime stories to his daughter and son, he thought:
Hmnh. Maybe it’s time.
Andy has been a library page, dairy science programmer, teacher, technical writer, and healthcare software developer. He’s schooled in computer science, philosophy, and library science, and grew up in a town in Ohio Amish country. He’s a husband, father, and nonprofit web developer living in Madison, Wisconsin. This is his first novel.
Contact Andy
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