The Universe's first mass murderer for thousands of years confesses; mind-bending SF from one of the genre's brightest talents.
Sprung from a prison in the centre of a star, the universe's last criminal is employed to kill the population of a planet. It is a crime that will tear apart an interstellar utopia. Keeping ahead of detection and preparing the crime, the killer voyages to numerous worlds and hones the instincts required for murder. And wonders who is behind the contract.
Roberts' new novel is an extraordinary fusing of ideas, exotic locations, personal drama and an enquiry into the nature of crime in a society that thinks it has forgotten how to commit it.
Adam Roberts is the author of 14 SF novels, most recently Jack Glass (which won the UK BSFA and the US John Campbell awards for best SF novel, 2013), as well as a number of critical works about science fiction, including Science Fiction (Routledge, 2000) and The Palgrave History of Science Fiction (Palgrave 2006). He regularly reviews the genre for The Guardian and is also a Professor of 19th-century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London; where he also teaches Creative Writing to undergraduates, specialising in 3rd-year final projects in SF and Fantasy.