THE END OF THE WORLD

An unlikely duo faces off against a sinister cult and tyrannical rulers in Gilchrist’s dark-fantasy debut and series launch.

In a distant-future dystopian world, fate pushes together black-market recycler Mica Stone and cyborg “mod” Animkii. Mica has somehow escaped captivity from the After Cult, a group convinced that her dreams harbor the portal to another world. Animkii has inexplicably lost her link to the vicious ruling Technocrats who modified her, freeing her of their mind-control and flooding her with pre-mod memories. She becomes infected by “pseudo-metal” biosteel, which consumes her body like a parasite, including, most alarmingly, her remaining flesh. Mica happens to be searching for an old friend, Samiel, who may be able to help reverse Animkii’s infection. Teaming up, the two fend off Technocrats and the After Cult while keeping their heads down in this world’s lowly undercities. Animkii and Mica ultimately run into even more dangerous enemies who threaten the entire world. Gilchrist drops readers into a dense plot already underway, with Mica imprisoned and Animkii and other mods leveling a city. But the author’s razor-sharp descriptions quickly make the bizarre world familiar—nightmares still torment Mica after losing most of her family to a plague years earlier, and Animkii fondly recalls her serene home village. A vibrant cast populates the story: Reptilian hybrids, Dreamers (with their “awful necrotic power”), and beings from the “Other World” emerge as potential allies and menaces. All the while, Gilchrist’s prose limns indelible passages: “Her skin still bore wounds resembling cracks in ice, though the deeper fissures on her arms had already begun to mend themselves, healing at an unnatural pace and leaving behind thin, black scars.” The story ends on a superlative cliffhanger.

A masterful kickoff to a series depicting a fascinating world and the spellbinding characters who inhabit it.