Ceres Storm (Special Archival Edition)

"Long ago, long before Dayblown Phobos was born, before the Ceres Storm and the Whirlwinds, from which time fled to us with hands across its eyes..." In the far future on a radically transformed Mars, a boy named Daric is swept up in the designs of the fabled Hesiarch, one man who is now many, battling each other while working to reassert their influence on the post-human solar system. First published to acclaim in 2000, Ceres Storm is a science fiction adventure in the pyrotechnic tradition of Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination and Cordwainer Smith’s Norstrilia. “Distinctive and imaginative, a debut of immense promise,” said Kirkus Reviews. Starlog proclaimed, “Through voyages on haunted spaceships, encounters with sentient plagues and descents into ancient tombs, bemused readers will sympathize with naïve Daric as one enigmatic incident follows another, characters shift from flesh to hologram to crystal to mechanical insect, and reality encompasses dream worlds, shared hallucinations and miniature cities. The book's a grand exercise in weirdness, cloaked in a coming of age story. It's a unique reading experience.” And Charles Harness, author of the classic The Paradox Men, enthused, “This epic unfolds in a seductive faerie tongue as we follow the perilous transformation of Daric from an adolescent boy into a primal galactic force. We flee with him along elusive coordinates as he deals with constructs that aid or hinder him, and one chromatic scene follows another as he escapes creatures who would bind him to their own uses. And so we move to a shattering climax. A beautiful read.” Ceres Storm is now presented in the Archival Edition, with previously unseen material from the larger Wilderness of Ruin cycle, and includes a new foreword by the author. Praise for Ceres “With its echoes of Vance and Wolfe, yet always secure in its own voice, Ceres Storm is that rarest of entities, a deftly plotted, ceaselessly inventive, unflaggingly intelligent adventure tale.” —Lucius Shepard “Ceres Storm is a rousing ride. Imaginative, inventive, gripping.” —Jack McDevitt “Blow the dust off your starship, friend, and take a far-flung future fling with Ceres Storm, a mind-melting first novel by David Herter. . . Ceres Storm completely abandons the lengthy exposition that typically bloats most contemporary science fiction in favor of a stripped-down thrill ride some 10,000 years in the future. Like classic space opera, there are exalted heroes, glorious spectacle and high galactic stakes.” —Fort Myers News-Press