A Slice of Mars by Guerric Haché

SPSFC 2023

Mars is a strange place these days. Corporate overlords, capitalism, and even aging are things of the past on a planet increasingly brimming with biodiversity - yet pizzerias are in short supply! Siblings Hett and San set out to change that. But a roboticist and a bureaucrat can't run a restaurant alone, so they bring on some help - a bioengineer, a communications scientist, and an unlikely grad student from Earth. Together, this gang of geeks will brave the fires of small business. But work is just a small part of life. People are complicated. Different brains, different wounds, different values, and one questionably tame wildcat will all collide as they try to grow and succeed together. What comes out of the oven, in the end, is anyone's guess.

Zeroth Law (Digitesque #1) by Guerric Haché

Autonomous machines polish the bones of a civilization slowly being swallowed by wilderness. Creatures not born of Earth inhabit the remote corners of the world. Humans live with legacies they don’t understand - old ruins, strange technological artifacts, incredible powers in their blood. There are other worlds alongside this one, and death is not what it once was. Isavel is ripped from a simple life into the heat of a conflict she doesn’t understand, and saddled with powers and expectations she doesn’t know how to handle. Lost in a storm, she hopes that by following the will of her gods, she might find purpose - and ultimately, peace. Ada took her own peaceful life and threw it out the window. Outcast for heresy against the scholarly dogma of her people, she decides the world needs to change, and she thinks she’s the one to do it. To her surprise, she happens to be living at a time of more wondrous and terrible change than she can imagine. These two young women must navigate a world that is is barely holding together, each only slowly becoming aware of the other’s existence and power. Each of them will have the chance to light a fire to change the world - but first, they must become the people they will need to be.

First Angels (Digitesque, #2) by Guerric Haché

Isavel has seen what comes after death, and wishes it on no one. Miraculous in the eyes of her peers and her elders, she has become the gods’ unwitting hand in an effort to stop an invasion of otherworldly creatures who would take human bodies as their own. She may fight bravely, but she is also beginning to learn that her influence may come at the cost of who she once was. But this invasion is not incomprehensible. Ada's ancestors corrupted the world this enemy is fleeing from, and so she believes the war is her problem to fix. After all, if civilization is to be built anew, the crisis threatening to destroy what little remains of it must be solved first, and Ada sees nobody better placed than herself to save the world and reverse Earth’s decline. As they both fight to restore the world, their disparate fates weave ever closer together. These gods-chosen mortals know each other’s face, but each has yet to understand who the other truly is, and the consequences of their collision could resonate beyond Earth, out into the stars that still keep watch over this forgotten planet.

Last Skies Afire (Digitesque, #6) by Guerric Haché

Worlds once alive are being destroyed; worlds once dormant must be brought back to life. Weapons that have long been wielded must be returned to the sheath; things never truly grasped must be wielded as weapons. What can Ada do, as planets burn under the inexorable advance of a machine fleet? What can Isavel do, from a shackled homeworld that has not been heard from in a thousand years? And what might they both do, if they were no longer alone? When seals are broken and barriers fail, when distances shrink to nothing and options dwindle into despair, both Ada and Isavel see only one way forward into a world that still lives on the other side of the fire: Let all hell break loose. All at once. And pray chaos is on their side.

Fourth Under Sol (Digitesque, #5) by Guerric Haché

Isavel was sure she was a gods-forged weapon. It seemed painfully obvious. So with her second life falling to pieces all around her, and nowhere left to go, she stands before them again, one last time - hoping, for once, to be a double-edged sword. Arguments with gods rarely end well, however. Now thrown so far off the path that no walking or wings could ever bring her home again, she finds the self-destructive legacy of her ancestors stretches far further afield than she could have imagined. The same old bones lie under alien soils, the same wars echo in different blood, the same silent stars twinkle above barren skies. And looming over it all, the same inscrutable gods - only these ones are within reach. And with every scuff and every broken promise, the visage of these gods crumbles away until Isavel finds herself staring at what lurks in their hearts and their roots. But these gods still stand, and still the worlds turn, and somehow she must find a path to her home, and a home for her heart. These old gods may stand in her way, and their wastelands may sap her strength. But she is a weapon, of a kind no god has ever known. And arguments with gods rarely end well.

The Broken Third (Digitesque, #4) by Guerric Haché

Out between stars and planets that left Earth behind many centuries ago, Ada Liu discovers a thriving but strangely archaic interstellar civilization - a Union of ancient colonies that have survived a war of apocalyptic proportions. Expecting to uncover the roots of Earth's downfall, she instead finds this society built by strange humans and familiar aliens is threatening, bewildering, and not at all what she had hoped. Her abandonment of Isavel Valdéz haunts her as she travels further and further, but with an array of hunters breathing down her neck and no way to return, Ada needs to gather what little help she can and find refuge between the cold vacuum of space and the unfamiliar soils of new worlds. She has one unsettling advantage: for better or worse, Ada is a strange daughter of a stranger Earth, and is perhaps the second most dangerous thing this Union has ever faced.

Second Contact (Digitesque Book 3) by Guerric Haché

Ada and Isavel still aren't sure if they are enemies, allies, rivals, or something else entirely - but the world is conspiring to force them into a decision. Peace between humans and their inhuman neighbours is crumbling, a millenium of stasis can no longer hold, ancient gods are losing their grip on Earth, and something from beyond the world is coming. There are cities to save, curses to lift, and exiles to end. Ada must say goodbye to the few allies she has, and her time to solve an ancient wrong done to humanity is running out. Isavel must save a city that will no longer listen to her, and is rushing into a war it may pay far too dearly to win. To achieve anything at all, the two of them may need to close the gap that separates them and start anew.