Dryad writer
Stories
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Memento Mori Station by Shannon Knight A thousand years have passed. Nyle, the only raven still on Earth, dutifully continues to tend the dead. His mind-reading assistant, Em Collins, helps him return to the present when memories pull him into echoes of the past. However, a mysterious invitation from a distant space station breaks Nyle’s routine. He’d had no intention of leaving Earth, but the message ends with a coded SOS from his old friend Ethan West. Nyle doesn’t hesitate. As his spaceship approaches the station, Nyle has plenty of time to consider the deep cold that signals a massive quantity of untended dead. Records show that multiple ravens had traveled to the station, yet no raven has ever left. Nyle refuses to abandon either Ethan or the dead, but the vast distances of space mean that whatever mysteries or obstacles surface, Nyle will have to face them with only the aid of his small team. The past and the future come together in the final installment of the Grave Cold trilogy! |
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Death Rights by Shannon Knight Grave Cold introduces a world overrun by mutations where the dead remain in their bodies till a raven releases them. Each raven is a long-lived individual steeped in the culture of the time and place they originated. However, the District of Portland is using the dead as an energy source. Nylewulf, an Anglo-Saxon man who has spent centuries hiding from humanity, and Cait, a beautician who happens to be a necromancer, team up to protect the dead. In Death Rights, Nyle and Cait have reached Angel’s Rest when a raven even older than Nyle appears. Lucius, known as the Kingmaker, is part of the council that regulates the elusive ravens. While DP aims to destroy every raven sanctuary in the district, Lucius unfurls his own plot. Once again, Nyle and Cait strive to stay alive and protect the dead. But survival alone doesn’t satisfy either of them. Justice requires that they face the government head on. |
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Reva’s clan, the Mauli, tattoo wishes into reality. Once revered, the Mauli now live in hiding, with a precious few imprisoned in a pit beneath the Ali’i’s palace. Burning for justice, Reva strides into the capital city, announces herself a wish giver, and allows herself to be bound. She knows the only way to save herself and her people is to grant her greatest enemy his every wish. Already outcast by her skill and arrogance, Reva feels she has nothing to lose and everything to gain. However, she faces not only the Ali’i, but the mighty White God and his followers, the animosity of the Mauli, and the burdensome eye of Mata, a dark god with an ambitious priest who has a wish of his own. Within the confines of the Ali’i’s palace, Reva secures love and friendship, but to destroy the Ali’i, she may be forced to sacrifice more than she has ever wished for. Wish Givers is an epic fantasy novel with a tropical island setting and themes of freedom, found family, and the pursuit of dreams. |
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In a universe of long-haul truckers, parasite-bearing megalomaniacs, asteroid rustlers, and homicidal peace keepers, some people just want to stay alive. Deep within Kerberos Station, pipe crawler Sachi Inside is dying of the planet-killing Hibravian virus. In a state of delirium, the agoraphobic girl agrees that in exchange for life, she will not only leave her pipes, but even the station. A sentient plant wraps around her, guides her to an exiting ship, and adheres to the hull. Captain Karasi Kwei is not pleased to discover a stowaway, but the crew thinks there’s money to be made on the plant, and the fact that both the Eastern Star Corporation and the Elysium Empire are tracking it confirms its value. However, none of that matters when the entire crew falls sick with the incurable Hibravian. But Sachi’s plant is more than it seems. All they have to do is fight the mercenaries, survive the virus, evade the Elysium Empire, and navigate a fluctuating microwave wall, and they just might save the universe. |
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Nyle doesn’t want to be there. But something is very wrong in the District of Portland, and the cold call of death forces his arrival. If he can’t lay the dead fast enough, his long life, begun in Anglo-Saxon England, will end. Portland’s electronic walls do more than keep the mutants out. The government is using them to block Nyle and his kind, the ravens, who roam the world, freeing the dead from their bodies where they remain trapped till a raven’s arrival. Cait, a Portlander working as a beautician, has her own troubles, dodging the GM (genetic modification) police and struggling with rent. But the dead are invading her dreams. Nyle tells Cait that she’s not genetically modified. She’s a necromancer. In the District of Portland, the dead are being trapped indefinitely and used as energy sources. Nyle and Cait must stop the technology from spreading before the abuse of the dead becomes a worldwide menace and they themselves end up on a laboratory table or trapped in a machine. Grave Cold is a biopunk novel about the value of life and the power of taking a stand in a grim near-future world of exploitation and authoritarianism. |