Expatria: The Box Set
Description
Available for the first time in a single volume: the Expatria duology.
The descendants of Expatria's first colonists from Earth have rejected technology. When Mathias Hanrahan tries to reintroduce the old ways he is framed for murder and forced to flee. Recruited by a research team, and against a background of impending war, Mathias discovers that strange messages are coming from space. Will renewed contact with Earth bring a new age of enlightenment, or does it spell disaster for the forgotten colony? When the expedition from the Holy Corporation of GenGen arrives, for some it looks like salvation from a backward-looking, superstition-ridden society, but for others, it looks suspiciously like an invasion.
What reviewers said about Expatria:
"Its carefully measured, consciously understated prose eschews any of the customary cheap stunts used by genre authors in an attempt to keep the reader whizzing through the pages ... To describe it as gripping would be accurate but would at the same time mislead: it grips because of the reader's absorption in the characters and the significance of the events rather than through any nonstop pulse-racing action... Brooke's tale-telling is superb ... a completely absorbing novel." Hugo and World Fantasy Award winner John Grant
"Book of the Month ... The mix of semi-pastoral life and scientific research is convincingly handled ... The underlying conflict between religion and science is finely wrought ... an absorbing piece of fiction. Highly recommended." Gamesmaster International
"Books like this are proving that the British can write SF as good as any American... This is a marvellous book that, despite the sequel ... is a complete novel in itself. Treat yourself: buy both, and read them over and over." Nexus
"Brooke is an author well worth reading ... I hope some publisher over here makes him available to American audiences." Locus
"...brought beautifully to life ... I enjoyed this book a great deal and will definitely buy the sequel." Critical Wave
What reviewers said about Expatria Incorporated:
"For Katya, a devout apparatchik of the Holy Corporation of GenGen, her voyage to newly colonised Expatria is a chance to confirm a faith that has been undermined by her rebellious brother. That subversion, though, has only just begun in a story that brilliantly shows a world in which religious belief is used to secular advantage-where creeds are implanted along with genes." The Times
"I have to admit to being truly astonished that this book, which is a direct sequel to Expatria, is neither simply the second half of one long story nor is it a lazy reworking of the first in a slightly different form. What we have here is a first-class novel of character that just happens to be set on the same world and use some of the same characters as the first novel. Keith Brooke has achieved something quite rare, in that the characters who we first met and saw grow and change in the first novel we now encounter and, knowing where they are coming from, can watch and enjoy and see them grow and change anew when their society changes due to new and different pressures. The first novel was of pressures from within, this one is of pressure from without, and both explore the effects superbly." Nexus
