LONG LIGHT is a bright, grounded solarpunk thriller set in the Lumen Age, where cities run on daylight and honesty is enforced in public. Peacewright Cassia Vale and engineer Teo Marin arrive at the Aerium—a city hung from sky cables—to do what Praxis does everywhere: build a wall of numbers the whole city can read, and end the sale of calm. In a market that charges for shade and quiet, they stamp a Wind, Shade, and Tether Register into glass and steel so a grandmother can argue with a councilman. Locks turn to rings; secrets turn to procedures; a boy learns to read strain by fingertip. When a cartel skims hours by twisting sails and vent shims, the fix happens in daylight. The first victory ripples: ground belts reclaim noon with prismatic skirts; a Thermal Court that auctions sun and sells cool is forced to tie mirrors and salt-draw to a public ring; a Night Register dims illegal sky-blooms so birds sleep and children see stars; a chapel’s Mirror Night is folded inward to light faces instead of painting a hill. Up on the plateau, pipelines that buy ‘still windows’ to freeze wind turbines meet a Torque Register; brake spacers and alarm instruments go on nails like a small museum of retired tricks. Down at the junction, Queue Cuts that sold green lights to freight retire in favor of a Signal Register that prints block state and crew time where passengers stand. At the harbor hinge, sponsored swing-bridges move to a Tide Chair; at the river, a Flood Seat ends 2 a.m. releases that sold sleep for price curves. The work is procedural, tactile, and fiercely humane: baffles and pads, hashes and rings, chairs and ledgers ordinary enough to keep without heroes in the room. Enemies arrive with contracts, euphemisms, and polished devices; they leave refunds and public plans on walls. What ties it all is the Praxis ethic: no private calm on public decks, no private shade on public lanes, no sold green on public rails. LONG LIGHT reads like a tour of a hopeful future under pressure—each fix a scene you can build in your hands, each win a new habit a city learns to keep. It’s engineering as drama, community as protagonist, and justice you can feel in the rail under your palm. For readers of Becky Chambers, Kim Stanley Robinson, and fans of hard systems with soft hearts, this novel delivers civic mystery, investigative verve, and the pleasure of watching places debug themselves in public. Standalone friendly—first in reading order after The Thousandfold Dawn or an entry point all its own—LONG LIGHT shows how a wall becomes a promise: numbers big enough for a child to read, and a city brave enough to obey them.
Genre: Science Fiction
Genre: Science Fiction
Used availability for Avery North's Long Light