The hall outside was made from the same milky translucent material as the egg chamber, its floor hard and cool and regular underfoot, except for the bodies. Viv, buzzed on adrenaline, had recovered enough from the almost drowning and the robot fight to feel pissed at him for that, but she was breathing too hard to joke about it, or to ask any of the questions gathered in starling flurries in her mind. He matched her pace so easily she had no doubt he could have lapped her on a quarter-mile track without noticing they were in a race. The patch worked scarily well: if his injury slowed him, Viv couldn’t see how. Hong of the Mirrorfaith turned out to be infuriatingly fit, with a distance runner’s level stride. They ran side by side down the hall through a war. Please enjoy the following excerpt and read the first three chapters on Tor.com. Trapped between the Pride-a ravening horde of sentient machines-and a fanatical sect of warrior monks who call themselves the Mirrorfaith, Viv must rally a strange group of allies to confront the Empress and find a way back to the world and life she left behind.Ī magnificent work of vivid imagination and universe-spanning action, Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone is a feminist Guardians of the Galaxy crossed with Star Wars and is on sale on June 18, 2019. Rebellion is literally impossible to consider–until Vivian Liao arrives.

The end of time is ruled by an ancient, powerful Empress who blesses or blasts entire planets with a single thought. A terrifying instant later, Vivian Liao is catapulted through space and time to a far future where she confronts a destiny stranger and more deadly than she could ever imagine. In the chilly darkness of a Boston server farm, Viv sets her ultimate plan into motion. On the eve of her greatest achievement, she tries to outrun people who are trying to steal her success.

A wildly successful innovator to rival Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Vivian Liao is prone to radical thinking, quick decision-making, and reckless action.