A World Adrift

A World Adrift

Venus has become a world of Zeppelin cities where merchants fly carbon-fiber airships. Whalers harpoon tin behemoths that rise from the murky depths. And the only woman who can save it all from ruin is being hunted by a man willing to do anything to seize her father’s empire.

Privilege is a double-edged sword. As a young noblewoman, Willamette Lolofi has an education and the freedom to indulge her curiosities. But the political marriage she faces won’t let her stop the looming threat she has discovered.

Countless cities, towns, and estates ride the winds of The Drift, a hospitable layer in the Venusian atmosphere, but they will eventually fall to ruin. As the tin behemoths that lift precious minerals from the depths grow scarce, conflicts drive the Commonwealth ever faster toward collapse.

Willamette is determined to avoid that tragic fate. She manipulates her parents into arranging a marriage that just might let her take action … but then a bloody coup by Colonel Kofi upends everything. In order to consolidate power, Kofi must eliminate the only person alive who can claim the right to rule the Commonwealth.

If Willamette has any chance of saving millions of people in The Drift, she must rally a menagerie of misfits to accomplish the unthinkable.

A World Adrift was first published in New Zealand, 3 October 2023.
EBook ISBN: 978-1-68057-426-5
Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-68057-427-2
358 pages
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About the Book
Endorsements
“Rollicking high adventure in a scientifically plausible way! With Van Belle's sure hand on the tiller, the clouds of Venus are alive with excitement.”
– Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of The Oppenheimer Alternative
About the Author
Douglas A. Van Belle

Douglas A. Van Belle is an award-winning author and screenwriter, and winner of New Zealand’s prestigious Sir Julius Vogel Award. His recent work includes science fiction novels The Barking Death Squirrels, The Care and Feeding of Your Lunatic Mage, and the YA title, The Kahutahuta. He spends his days as a Senior Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, where his research includes the politics of crises and the role science fiction in society, which are related in surprising ways. Also an artisan bladesmith, he is a passionate advocate for the therapeutic value of playing with fire and pounding the living daylights out of white-hot steel.