The Dead-Star Rover

On a dying world, two peoples war for the last of everything. The Terrapins crawl beneath iron skies, armored and grim, while the Bird-People rule the poisoned winds from their flying machines. Between them roams nothing but savagery: the engine-hunters, the killing tractors, the grinding war-machines that answer to no flag. Torcred is a Terrapin warrior who has spent his life shooting down the sky-tyrants. When he brings down one of their craft, he expects to find another enemy. Instead he finds Ladna, a bird-girl whose people have taught her that Terrapins are mindless beasts. Thrown together by circumstance and circumstance alone, they must cross a poisoned wilderness while their own kind hunts them both. The real enemy isn't the mechanical predators that stalk the wastes. It's the ancient hatreds that made them enemies in the first place. Abernathy writes with the muscular poetry of pulp's golden age, but this is no straightforward space opera. It's a story about finding love in the gap between civilizations, about trust when everything teaches you otherwise. For readers who like their science fiction lean, mean, and surprisingly tender.