FALLING INTO SHADOW

 A motley array of competing interstellar groups battle over a futuristic world facing extreme climate change in this sci-fi novel from Palleschi.

This epic tale unfolds some 27,000 years in the future on the planet-sized moon Novena, where citizens of the Ionian Republic are migrating south to escape the looming 26-year-long winter. Unfortunately, their refuge zone in the Tawny Desert, which is beginning its lush, rainy 26-year-long spring, has been conquered by Antoine Calicchio, a trafficker in the highly addictive narcotic called Stygian. To keep the Ionians out, he imports two million Osharian religious zealots to settle and defend the region—led by the physically disabled Killian Scuro, who is also a persuasive speaker. Trying to reconquer the desert are the Ionian Knights, whose members have awesome powers channeled through crystalline geodes. Knights Sophie Song and Alex Lucien are in the thick of the action, but are then assigned to train one Isaak Kaldera, a teenage street hustler with precocious skills in geode manipulation and prophesied to play a decisive role in the conflict. They square off against Calicchio’s army of geode-wielding Camo Warriors—so named for their chameleonic armor—and Scuro’s lieutenant Dark Spectre, a man-shaped cloud who wields a flaming sword and whip. While the rival armies edge toward a climactic showdown, the narrative also follows Dante Zarr's efforts to take over his father’s mega-conglomerate, a struggle that embroils him in cutthroat family intrigues and a treasonous alliance with Calicchio.

This first book in Palleschi’s Falling into Shadows series builds a densely inhabited, variegated society in which nigh-magical future technology coexists with modern corporate skullduggery and organized crime, ancient faiths, and medievalesque military orders, all overlaid with an ominous eco-anxiety; it feels something like a mash-up of Dune and Star Wars, Alien and The Godfather. Characters run the gamut of social niches, from arrogant rich jerks to a harried government bureaucrat trying to find housing for refugees: all of them with complex psyches and mixed motives. Dante, in particular, is a compelling, Macbeth-like bundle of tragic impulses; a frustrated, insecure figure who imagines himself morally purer than his cynical father, but finds himself gradually corrupted by his own unacknowledged thirst for power and manhood. Palleschi’s muscular, evocative prose delivers gripping combat scenes with whimsical gadgets wreaking colorful carnage. (“The spinning disc sprayed a glowing red liquid in all directions. The Knights generated shields, but one was not quick enough, and the viscous fluid sliced his body to ribbons”). The author also subtly dissects the hypocrisies and lies that his characters tell themselves to ease their spiritual disintegration. The result is a page-turner with real psychological depth.

A richly imagined fantasy adventure full of slashing action and nervy psychological tension.