Rat Nothing
"Don't fear the future. The past has destroyed you already"
On the broken world of Nelga Nense, there is a city on the sea called Sabot, where monsters are manufactured, where the sky-blackening machines of industry are powered by beating hearts. It is a city where the whims of the weather rewrite reality, where magic is wielded only by those who sacrifice their humanity to it. Battling gangs paint the streets with blood; factories burn up workers like coal. It is a city where the common masses live imprisoned beneath brutal police, scheming nobility, and an iron-hearted ruler. There is no change. Only fear. Anger.
In this city, four moments in four lives unfold: a princess is stolen from her life of luxury, and must become another person to survive Sabot’s hungry slums; a musician turns terrorist when pushed too far; a secret assignment compels a detective to question his loyalty to his city; a politician in a dead-end office hungers for more power, and will obtain it by any means. Their stories are one story- of betrayal, of revenge, of sacrifice and loss, of a revolution, of a conspiracy… of a war.
Judgement is coming to the city of Sabot, and these four will decide the sentence of a city that is almost- but not quite- beyond saving.
Book One of Rat Nothing is complete as of December 2015.