Search Worlds Without End

From the author of the Renshai novels comes an exciting fantasy adventure, as one man fights to save his family through any means necessary

Tamison had been a miner until the cave-in that killed his brother and father left him with a paralyzing fear of venturing underground. With the passing years and the growth of his own new family, Tamison is willing to turn his hand to any trade that will feed his wife and children. But in a realm where guilds rule--and where his own guild canno longer support him--Tamison is forced to steal food or see his family starve. Caught in the act, Tamison is sentenced to four years on a chain gang.

And when he is finally released, he discovers that his family had been kidnapped. Now he's determined to rescue them--but he can't do it alone. To break into a seemingly impenetrable city, he will need the help of three unlikely allies: a guard, a thief, and a fortune-teller...

Serving aboard the Ananke, an experimental military spacecraft launched by the ruthless organization that rules Earth and its solar system, computer scientist Althea has established an intense emotional bond -- not with any of her crewmates, but with the ship's electronic systems, which speak more deeply to her analytical mind than human feelings do. But when a pair of fugitive terrorists gain access to theAnanke, Althea must draw upon her heart and soul for the strength to defend her beloved ship.

While one of the saboteurs remains at large somewhere on board, his captured partner -- the enigmatic Ivan -- may prove to be more dangerous. The perversely fascinating criminal whose silver tongue is his most effective weapon has long evaded the authorities' most relentless surveillance -- and kept the truth about his methods and motives well hidden.

As the ship's systems begin to malfunction and the claustrophobic atmosphere is increasingly poisoned by distrust and suspicion, it falls to Althea to penetrate the prisoner's layers of intrigue and deception before all is lost. But when the true nature of Ivan's mission is exposed, it will change Althea forever -- if it doesn't kill her first.

Once Ananke was an experimental military spacecraft. But a rogue computer virus transformed it -- her -- into something much more: a fully sentient artificial intelligence, with all the power of a god -- and all the unstable emotions of a teenager.

Althea, the ship's engineer and the last living human aboard, nearly gave her life to save Ananke from dangerous saboteurs, forging a bond as powerful as that between mother and daughter. Now she devotes herself completely to Ananke's care. But teaching a thinking, feeling machine -- perhaps the most dangerous force in the galaxy -- to be human proves a monumental challenge. When Ananke decides to seek out Matthew Gale, the terrorist she regards as her father, Althea learns that some bonds are stronger than mortal minds can understand -- or control.

Drawn back toward Earth by the quest, Althea and Ananke will find themselves in the thick of a violent revolution led by Matthew's sister, the charismatic leader Constance, who will stop at nothing to bring down a tyrannical surveillance state. As the currents of past decisions and present desires come into stark collision, a new and fiery future is about to be born.

Ananke, once a military spacecraft, is now a sentient artificial intelligence. Ananke may have the powers of a god, but she is consumed by a very human longing: to know her creators. Now Ananke is on a quest to find companionship, understanding, and even love. She is accompanied by Althea, the engineer who created her, and whom she sees as her mother. And she is in search of her "father," Matthew, the programmer whose code gave her the spark of life.

But Matthew is on a strange quest of his own, traveling the galaxy alongside Ivan, with whom he shares a deeply painful history. Ananke and her parents are racing toward an inevitable collision, with consequences as violent as the birth of the solar system itself -- and as devastating as the discovery of love.