Cyber Circus

Shortlisted for both the BSFA and the British Fantasy Awards for best novel. Going to the circus will never be the same again... Hellequin, last of the HawkEye military elite, is desperate to escape the legacy of Soul Food, the miraculous plant supplement that leeched the soil, destroyed his family, and instigated a bloody civil war. For a man awaiting the inevitable madness brought on by his enforced biomorph implant, there's only one choice. Run away with the circus... Drifting above a poisoned landscape, Cyber Circus and her exotic acrobats and bioengineered freaks bring a welcome splash of colour into folk's drab lives. None more so than escaped courtesan turned-dancer Desirous Nim. When Nim's freedom and her very life are threatened, Hellequin is forced to fight again. But, even united, will the weird troupe and their strange skills be enough to save Nim and keep their home aloft? That's assuming, of course, that Zan City's Blood Worms, mute stowaways, or the swarms don't manage to bring them down first... Welcome to the greatest show on Sore Earth! "Kim Lakin-Smith is not just the real thing she has a real way with words. Cyber Circus is as honestly brutal a twisted cybernetic love story as anything I've read. She makes mixing emotion with action and world building look effortless." - Jon Courtenay Grimwood "Cyber Circus is surely beyond any previous perverse riff on a carnival set in an alternate surreality. Just beware the hallucinatory dementing seductions of Kim Lakin-Smith¿s inventions. An astonishing piece of work." - Ian Watson "Exotic characters, roaming a Dust Bowl ambience of 30s America, surrounded by the pervading aroma of stomped grass and burning lamp oil bring a rich atmosphere to this unique and quirky tale." - Storm Constantine "Kim Lakin-Smith's dark, lyrical prose flows towards the poetic, making you sigh with pleasure." - Graham Joyce