These, then, are some of the rag-tag group of misfits ranged against the Jade Empress, a woman so powerful she dreams of bending all of reality to her whim.

If she needed to hide in the shadows, she’d just snuff out the sun. Zanj had her tricks, but Viv would never accuse her of subtlety.

And let’s face it, anyone who tries to throw Zanj anywhere is likely to end up dead in very short order. Furred and tailed, with claws as sharp as her intellect, Zanj is the ally everyone needs, if only it were possible to trust her further than you could throw her. She had led a revolt that was very nearly successful, but instead ended up imprisoned in a star, until Viv came along and freed her. Zanj is probably the only person in the galaxy that the Empress fears. Most of all, however, there is Zanj, the Pirate Queen. There is also Xiara, princess of a warrior clan on a backwards planet where the locals just happen to have been genetically engineered to be brilliant space pilots. Hong’s people worship the Empress, but he is a heretic, seeing in Vivian an opportunity to bring about change. All she has to rely upon is iron determination and a lifetime’s experience in people management.įortunately she has Hong, a warrior monk of the Mirrorfaith. Our hero is Vivian Liao, self-confident to a fault but utterly out of her depth having been stolen away from Earth and dropped in the middle of a galaxy-spanning conflict. I won’t dive into the depths as that would be spoilery, but here’s a few examples of the entertainment on offer. The book does feel very much like a Flash Gordon story at times, but there’s a lot more too it than that. That, of course, is only the first layer. This is just a couple of lines describing your idea that you can pitch in a matter of seconds, perhaps where a decision maker is in an elevator with you and can’t escape.įor Max Gladstone’s Empress of Forever the elevator pitch might have been: Flash Gordon, but Emperor Ming is a woman and Flash is a lesbian tech entrepreneur. One of the things that is fashionable in the publishing industry these days is to have an “elevator pitch” for your book.

Max gladstone empress of forever