When Simon Bonaventure breaks the law on his seventeenth birthday, he expects to pay the price.
He doesn't expect his father to pay it instead.
Sentenced in his place. Executed in front of him.
But his father's sacrifice bought him one concession: instead of execution, Simon could enter the Ascent of Angels — a gladiatorial tournament aboard the Exsta, a ring-shaped space station where seven teams fight through seven brutal ecosystems for the right to join the ruling class. Except, it's a ruse: underdogs always lose. In two hundred years, no team from the Fallen — criminals, outcasts, the condemned — has ever come close.
They're not there to compete. They're there to be a warning.
Simon's team doesn't have the training, the connections, or the protection to win. What they have is each other — and a captain with nothing left to lose.
If he loses, his father's death bought nothing. If they win — against every odd — the whole system comes down with them.
A space dystopia of gladiatorial competition, class warfare, found family, and a rigged game that the lowborn were never supposed to survive.
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
He doesn't expect his father to pay it instead.
Sentenced in his place. Executed in front of him.
But his father's sacrifice bought him one concession: instead of execution, Simon could enter the Ascent of Angels — a gladiatorial tournament aboard the Exsta, a ring-shaped space station where seven teams fight through seven brutal ecosystems for the right to join the ruling class. Except, it's a ruse: underdogs always lose. In two hundred years, no team from the Fallen — criminals, outcasts, the condemned — has ever come close.
They're not there to compete. They're there to be a warning.
Simon's team doesn't have the training, the connections, or the protection to win. What they have is each other — and a captain with nothing left to lose.
If he loses, his father's death bought nothing. If they win — against every odd — the whole system comes down with them.
A space dystopia of gladiatorial competition, class warfare, found family, and a rigged game that the lowborn were never supposed to survive.
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Used availability for Shawn Whitney's Ascent of Angels