Counterfeit Kings - Softcover

Connell, Adam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0972002642 ISBN 13: 9780972002646

Publisher: UNKNO, 2004

Synopsis

Long Live the Kings!

Once a bodyguard for the King of the Io colony, Horrocks now toils in one of the brimstone moon’'s orbiting Furnaces, —a network of processing stations that harvest power from Io'’s continuous volcanic eruptions. Horrocks'’ new job is rough and unglamorous, but with his wife expecting their first child, he wants nothing more to do with the kill-or-be-killed life of a King'’s bodyguard.

Horrocks’' hopes for a stable future are shattered when an assassination attempt kills one of the King’'s sons and forces the King himself into hiding. Civil war looms as many factions compete for control of the leaderless colony.

Called back into service by the Queen, Horrocks agrees to spearhead the King’'s rescue. Now Horrocks must track down the Ringers, a new breed of bodyguard surgically altered to mimic the King, who all vanished moments after the attempted assassination. To make matters worse, Horrocks’' wife insists on joining the hunt, plunging herself and their unborn child into the kind of do-or-die danger Horrocks had worked so hard to keep them from.

Horrocks’' quest to restore his King will cost him more than even he could predict as he struggles to find the real prize hidden among the... COUNTERFEIT KINGS.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

From the author of Lay Saints and Total Secession, enjoy Counterfeit Kings, Adam Connell's first novel, a cult classic that has become known as the anti-Space Opera novel.

About the Author

I was born in 1973 and grew up on Long Island. Disregard what many people have said; Long Island wasn't a terrible place to grow up during the 70s and 80s. My parents and my sister loved me. But I was the least popular kid at school and Blah Blah Blah. You've heard this shit before. Hell, maybe you even lived it, too, like me. What's important is that I loved to read. As I got into science fiction and fantasy and horror, when I became enthralled with genre books my local library was starved for, I got part-time jobs in Junior High and High School so I could buy the books I needed, that I craved, that nourished me.

I went to NYU to study Literature. To study books simply because there was nothing more I wanted to learn everything about. I didn't take a single class on creative writing. Most of my fans are surprised at this, but auditing a few of these classes I saw that they were too competitive for me, that half the students delighted in crushing the works of their classmates. I wrote in private. I wrote alone in NYU's giant and lonely library. When I graduated and couldn't get a job in publishing, I worked elsewhere and I wrote at night. While my coworkers were becoming fast friends and going out for drinks, I abstained and stayed at home and wrote at night, every night.

My life has been one of sacrifice and success. I'm not complaining, because I've written some good books and I'll write many more. I know that the most satisfying act is not having put "The End" to a book I was proud of. The most satisfying is that hazy span between books. The gathering, like berries, of ideas and characters and themes and story. Reading and musing and writing. They're more important to me than vegetables and water and air. (But not more important than my wife. Jeannie is the exception to my life of dust jackets and ink-stained fingers and notebooks.) This, in 362 words, is who I am, or in pockets of doubt, who I strive to be.

Edition details

• Publisher: UNKNO
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0972002642
• ISBN 13: 9780972002646
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 380