About Starbreaker

The Short Version

I’ll give you the short version first, but I won’t guarantee it can fit in 140 characters.

Morgan Stormrider doesn’t know he’s a machine. He doesn’t know Isaac Magnin saved humanity from demonic tyranny. Nor does Morgan care; he swore to expose Magnin, and nothing will stop him.

Sound good? I think it sounds pretty simplistic, but that’s the central conflict of a science fantasy epic which began as a single gargantuan novel, and will now span four novels of more reasonable length. Starbreaker is more than Morgan Stormrider’s search for the truth about Isaac Magnin, and his quest to expose this truth and place Magnin on trial for his crimes.

The Long Version

What? You’re still here? I meant it when I said there’s more to Starbreaker than Morgan Stormrider’s search for the truth about Isaac Magnin and the Phoenix Society. Indulge me a bit longer, if you please, as I introduce some of the cast of Starbreaker, and their concerns, in greater detail.

Isaac Magnin, head of the Phoenix Society’s executive council and CEO of the AsgarTech Corporation, has a problem. An extraterrestrial entity imprisoned beneath the city he helped build strains against its bonds, eager to resume the genocide of Magnin’s people. Only one weapon can destroy it, and he must ensure the one man he considers suitable for the job is ready and willing to take up the Starbreaker.

Naomi Bradleigh wants Morgan to resign his Adversary’s commission and join her in the studio to record a new album in the wake of the catastrophic breakup of their old band, Crowley’s Thoth. The past which binds her love binds her just as tight, and they must face the truth together.

Edmund Cohen and his squad would not have survived Nationfall without Michael Desdinova’s help, but the good doctor’s help comes with a harsh price. Paying the debt means betraying Morgan Stormrider, who has fought beside him, trusted him, and forgiven him when his self-indulgence strained the limits of their bond. Refusing to lead Morgan into Isaac Magnin’s trap means betraying Desdinova.

Elisabeth Bathory is trapped. One of the men she loves demands she aid his cause by becoming his nemesis. She is to guide an asura emulator who has every reason to mistrust her as successive ordeals hone him. Her regard for Isaac Magnin demands both her obedience and her defiance. Which path will she choose?

Josefine Malmgren never wanted anything more than to prove herself worthy of her patron’s investment in her. Hired by the AsgarTech Corporation after Isaac Magnin personally funded her studies of computer science and psychology, Malmgren immediately set her mind to the service of Magnin’s ultimate goal: the creation of androids whose bodies existing AIs might claim as their own. When the prototype turns on her, however, and claims to be acting on her patron’s orders, nothing seems to make sense any longer.

Thagirion, eldest of the Disciples of the Watch, fears the consequences of her protege’s plans for Morgan Stormrider and the Starbreaker. Though their common enemy poses as deadly a threat to their people as it does to humanity, Imaginos may prove more perilous.

Morgan Stormrider is an Adversary, an Individual Rights Defense (IRD) agent sworn to the Phoenix Society. When the organization to which he gave a decade of his life determines he is a liability, he is duty-bound to find out why. The answer he discovers might shatter his civilization.