A time traveler defies Fate to keep his family safe, a battered fleet leads invaders on a wild goose chase through unexplored space, and a delivery man unearths a conspiracy from before the rise of man in this week’s roundup of the newest releases in science fiction.

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Alliance Insurgent (Alliance Trilogy #3) – Michael Wallace

Captain Jess Tolvern of HMS Blackbeard led a Royal Navy expedition across long-dormant space lanes toward Old Earth when an alien fleet ambushed her battle cruiser. The aliens are Adjudicators, an ancient race whose ethos is to judge other species and reduce their survivors to a stone age existence.

Tolvern sent a desperate message back to headquarters. By the time she returned home, the aliens already invaded Alliance territory with a powerful fleet of star fortresses and accompanying dragoon ships, trapping and laying siege to the allied fleet. A desperate defense wins a short respite, but victory turns to chaos when the Adjudicators awaken an ancient star leviathan and send it against the allied fleet. Falling back to friendly territory ahead of this terrifying weapon, Jess Tolvern and the allied command muster the combined forces of the Alliance planets to finally defeat the Adjudicators and push across the inner frontier to reestablish contact with the remaining civilizations of Old Earth.

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Black Dawn (Blood on the Stars #8) – Jay Allan

War is coming, darker and more terrible than any that have come before.

The Hegemony is coming to impose its brutal system of genetic supremacy on the Confederation and the other nations on the Rim, to make its elite Masters the unchallenged rulers of all human habitation in the galaxy.

The White Fleet had been an expression of optimism, a grand expedition to explore the vast reaches of the long-dead empire. Tasked to uncover the secrets of the devastating Cataclysm and to seek and recover the advanced ancient technology that humanity had once possessed, it found something else instead.

A new enemy. A vast domain, one with advanced technology, massive fleets, and a genetically-ordered society and hierarchy it intends to impose on all humanity everywhere. The Hegemony is like nothing Tyler Barron and his comrades have ever encountered…but the veteran admiral must find a way to fight the far superior enemy, to rally the Confederation’s forces, and those of the other Rim nations, for what may well be the final war.

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Cryptic Commands – Steve Rzasa

Watch your back…

Vincent Chen makes sure his comms ferry satellites don’t harbor malfunctions. He’d prefer they didn’t hide people inside, too.

The woman left comatose aboard one he recovers is on a vital mission. She must stop criminals from stealing classified secrets and selling them to the highest bidder. But those criminals know she’s on the run, and Vincent is caught up in the chase.

Determined they stay silent, she’s left him only one choice: to seek help from his fellow comms jockeys, in hopes they can fend off a raid and keep the data safe. When their plans fall apart, Vincent must rely on others when he’d rather be on his own…

And trusting anyone is dangerous.

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Discovery (First Colony #5) – Ken Lozito

Exploring New Earth should be a thrilling undertaking. Instead, the more the colonists learn about the planet, the more alarmed they become. Alien ruins hint at a species who fought great wars among themselves and disappeared centuries ago.

When Connor Gates discovers a hidden bunker, he finds something he never expected. Everything the colonists have learned about New Earth’s previous inhabitants is wrong. Connor must race to unravel the mystery. The colonists must face the possibility that they are not alone and that New Earth was never theirs for the taking.

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Earth Unrelenting (Forgotten Earth #2) – M. R. Forbes

A fugitive captured. A hero forsaken.

A secret revealed.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Three days. That’s what they promised. But on Earth the danger is unrelenting, and promises are hard to keep.

Now Sheriff Duke is the one on the run, chased by an unexpected enemy eager to finish what they started. An enemy with an agenda that begins with killing him but ends with something worse.

Much, much worse.

Once the secret is out, the universe will never be the same…

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Mech Wars (Mech Wars omnibus) – Scott Bartlett

Humanity is tired of losing. Enter the mech.

Jake Price has always dreamed of joining the Darkstream military, like his father before him. When he’s told his gaming scores are good enough to qualify him for a brand new training program, designed to find recruits talented enough to pilot humanity’s first mechs, he can hardly believe it.

He’s right to be doubtful. There are hundreds of other recruits competing for the same eight jobs, and they’re all as skilled as he is. Worse, the training instructor is an unhinged chief with a particular dislike for Jake.

But Jake refuses to give up, refuses to wash out. Because humanity is facing its greatest threat yet. If someone doesn’t step up, it could all be over for the human species.

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Quantum Synapse – Russell Blake

A plan to enslave humanity begins with a conspiracy from the dawn of time.

Only one man can stop the unthinkable from happening.

Veritas Grey is a down-on-his-luck delivery worker in a dystopian future, until an accident turns his world upside down.

Hunted by a powerful cabal, Veritas and a young woman with a murky past must beat impossible odds if humanity is to continue to exist. Can they untangle a centuries-old secret in time to survive? Will Veritas embrace a forgotten past that could destroy him and those he loves? Can a conspiracy that dates to Mesopotamia be thwarted before the world’s enslaved?

In order to do so, Veritas must navigate a treacherous maze of secret societies, forbidden knowledge, quantum theory, and ancient technologies, and decipher a mystery at the root of mankind’s existence.

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The Song of Earth (Children of Earthrise #5) – Daniel Arenson

Earth burns.

After generations in exile, we returned to our long-lost planet. Scarred. Haunted. Survivors. We–the last humans–are finally home.

But our enemies still crave our blood.

Seven alien species unite. Seven fleets bombard our planet. Seven armies invade our beautiful world. They have one goal: To kill us all.

We refuse to lose Earth again. We will resist. We will fight for every hill, every valley, every stone and blade of grass. We will defend our planet. At any cost.

Together, we will raise our voices. We will sing the song of Earth. We will tell the enemy: Earth is ours!

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The Warp Clock (In Times Like These #4) – Nathan Van Coops

To Save Her Future, He Can’t Have One.

Ben Travers is facing an impossible choice. When a girl arrives from his future claiming to be family, she brings nothing but bad news. Ben has two possible fates, and no matter which he chooses, he has to die.

In a desperate bid to alter his future, Ben must seek a mysterious device that the Quickly family would rather keep hidden. He’ll confront a rogue faction of temporal fugitives—his only ally a girl he never knew existed.

Adventure. Family. Time Travel. For Ben Travers, it’s all going to collide.

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Weaver (Four Horsemen Tales #2) – Kacey Ezell and Mark Wandrey

A Tortantula and a Flatar. The most enigmatic teaming in the mercenary guild, it’s also a perfect pairing, where one’s strengths cover the other’s weakness. Raised together from birth, their lives are a brutal series of tests. From the moment they’re thrust together, they are forced to kill their own kind just to survive. No excuses, no mercy, no room for failure. Succeed…or die.

Azah isn’t like most other female Tortantula; she’s much smaller and made fun of constantly. No one expects her to survive, much less succeed, but she’s still given a chance and assigned a Flatar: Sadek. The two quickly bond and find they complement each other. Against all odds, they survive the breeding dome and join the ranks of their races’ mercenaries.

But Azah begins to exhibit some extremely odd abilities, and everything changes. When Sadek uncovers a plan to manipulate the Tortantula breeding program, he’s unable to determine what their goals are…only that they have plans for Azah. Powerless to stop their shadowy machinations, the two know one thing: they want to stay together ‘Zha Oort’—until the ending.

But Fate is calling, and Fate doesn’t care what anyone wants.

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Winter Overrun (Lost Time #4) – Damien Boyes

Finsbury Gage is terrified of what’s inside him.

He’s been dead more than once, and haunted now by the memories of lives he never lived. All he wants to do is hide—from a world he doesn’t belong to and the person he doesn’t recognize—until he’s forced from his self-imposed exile by a threat the police can’t handle and a request he can’t refuse.

A girl has gone missing. Arrived in the big city from the Preserves and immediately disappeared. Her brother’s come looking for her, and while a lifetime on a farm hasn’t prepared him to navigate the dangerous Reszo underworld, he’s not about to let that or anything else stop him from finding his sister.

Finsbury will be drawn into a hunt for a killer no one believes in. Someone who doesn’t just kill—he steals the thoughts of his victims and makes them part of himself.

Finsbury Gage is about to meet Winter, and neither of them will ever be the same.

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The World Armada (Superluminary #3) – John C. Wright

Although the Lords of Creation survived the awesome onslaught of the world-killing space vampires, there is nowhere in the lifeless galaxy that they can hope to hide their planets and people forever. How can they hope to destroy what is already dead?

The vampiric necroforms are a massive empire of anti-life, terrible beyond all imagining, ruling a vast network of dead stars and planets they have drained of all life. Aeneas, the Emperor of Man, realizes that if the human race is going to survive, he is going to have to find a way to re-seed the entire galaxy with life while burning down the interstellar undead empire with the precious light it cannot bear. And not only does Aeneas have to do the impossible, he is going to have to do it while keeping a wary eye out for the ruthless betrayer at his back.

SUPERLUMINARY is the latest and most brilliant creation of science fiction grandmaster John C. Wright, the Dragon-award winning author of THE UNWITHERING REALM, THE GOLDEN AGE, MOTH & COBWEB, and AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND. THE WORLD ARMADA is the third and final book in the trilogy.