I of the Storm: Lower Heaven, Episode 1
I of the Storm, by Benjamin Loomis (Lower Heaven, Episode 1)
ISBN: 978-1799267898 | Published by Free Radical Books
Twelve score and four years ago, the Founders crash-landed in a new world. Fleeing the war-ravaged Old Continent, these brave refugees built a city on the principles of Merit, Logic, and Freedom. They named this new place Heaven.
Two centuries later, Heaven’s on the verge. The city swells with people, solar shortages and food panics rule the day. The City Corps polices the streets with high-tech magic, while the Wizard government mandates top-down solutions from their lofty glass pyramids.And beyond the lake-wall, hunters chase magical storms that transform beasts and shatter the human brain, risking sanity for a chance to make their fortune.Felix and Vic would be happy to make their rent. The two roommates struggle for a place in a city with no room for them, trying to get ahead, without being crushed beneath the Founders' dream for a better world.
Lower Heaven is a five-part serial novel exploring cultural myths and realities in a speculative, millennial, solarpunk, urban fantasy universe, the debut work of Benjamin Loomis.
About the Author:
Author Ben Loomis lives in Portland, Oregon and can’t afford to do anything, so he literally writes all day. Half is writing nonprofits in PDX, for whom Ben produces grants and other documents in order to (sometimes) pay his bills. The other portion is devoted to Lower Heaven, Free Radical Books, and exploring the cognitively-dissonant space between how fucked the world is and what potential it still has. There is a lot of space in that abyss, so he stays pretty busy. This indicates his social skills are suffering, but he hasn’t talked to anyone in long enough to verify.
That’s something he is going to have to work on, but in the meantime, books are being created.
Lower Heaven:
Loomis’s first book, Lower Heaven, sets up a detailed universe far removed from postmodern America, as means to both run away from his problems and cut deeper into them. The island city of Heaven has gone off the rails, but to the children born there, their present day isn’t that much worse than yesterday’s. The four characters move through a labyrinth of social and economic structures that make the sense of a tower built too tall, twisting in the wind. They struggle to keep up, to not become outcasts in their own land, and find something to actually like about each of their broken personalities.
To not to be consumed by the mechanisms baked into their cityscape or fall prey to the jungle everywhere beyond. To try to get better in a civilization working hard to get worse. To find the throughline of reason, logic, law, work, technology, and a sense of self they can live with.
Lower Heaven Episode 1 is available right now as a $2.99 ebook or paperback here. Buy direct from freeradbooks.com to support the full series as it rolls out!
You can also:
Preorder Episode 2 or sign up as a Free Radical Beta Reader to read it for free right now
Sign up for the Free Radical Newsletter
Check out Ben’s Portfolio Page
Thanks all, happy reading! More soon.
-Ben
#KnowYourNME