THE DROWNED AGE

The Books

Eleven novels in four collections, presented in the order the world lived them. Each collection stands on its own; the gaps between them are enormous, and deliberate.

THE DROWNING YEARS

The collapse itself, and the first two generations on the water. Closest to the world you know, and the only place you will see the old one ending.

Cover of The First Drowning

THE DROWNING YEARS · BOOK ONE

The First Drowning

The end of the age of return. A competent civilisation keeps managing an emergency until, without anyone deciding it, the emergency has become the world — and the vocabulary of the old one goes on being used a while longer.

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Cover of The Last Shore

THE DROWNING YEARS · BOOK TWO

The Last Shore

The land that remained, and what people did to hold it. High ground becomes the closest thing the new world has to old money, and the water fills with those it will not admit.

Paperback & Kindle editions — coming soon

Cover of The First Gyre

THE DROWNING YEARS · BOOK THREE

The First Gyre

Two hundred and eleven vessels of forty-one fleets arrive at a station proved in open water — and do not disperse. The founding of the first nation without land.

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THE SECOND DROWNING

A duology a century and a half on, about the disaster that severed the record, and the people who had to write down what had happened while they were still standing in it.

Cover of The Returned Sky

THE SECOND DROWNING · BOOK ONE

The Returned Sky

An engineering project promises to give the drowned world back what it lost. It is enormous, publicly argued over, honestly meant, and built by people who are good at their jobs.

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Cover of The Naming of the First

THE SECOND DROWNING · BOOK TWO

The Naming of the First

After the works are lost, the survivors must make the record while still standing in the ruin of it — and a rule ten words long is drafted that will outlive every institution that remembers why.

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THE DROWNED AGE TRILOGY

The sequence's centre of gravity, four centuries on from the duology. A settled ocean civilisation meeting something it cannot account for.

Cover of The Seven of the Gyre

THE DROWNED AGE TRILOGY · BOOK ONE

The Seven of the Gyre

Four centuries after the record was severed, the ocean civilisation is settled, chartered and sure of itself. Then the readings stop agreeing with the world.

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Cover of The Black Wave

THE DROWNED AGE TRILOGY · BOOK TWO

The Black Wave

What the field will tolerate becomes the most dangerous question afloat — and the people licensed to answer it discover what their certifications are actually worth.

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Cover of The Silent Horizon

THE DROWNED AGE TRILOGY · BOOK THREE

The Silent Horizon

The surfacing. The event most people spend their whole lives entirely certain about, without ever seeing — arrives.

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THE LATER STORIES

The world after the trilogy, and what the next generation does with what it inherited.

Cover of The Drownborn

THE LATER STORIES · BOOK ONE

The Drownborn

Twelve years after the surfacing. The people born adapted to the water, the paperwork that governs them, and a Keeper who begins to see what four hundred years of scrupulously honest entries add up to.

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Cover of The Sky Beneath

THE LATER STORIES · BOOK TWO

The Sky Beneath

The vocabulary changes again, and this time the speakers are in the air. The field is not a god, it is not a mind, and it is not on anyone's side.

Paperback & Kindle editions — coming soon

Cover of The Last Green

THE LATER STORIES · BOOK THREE

The Last Green

What the next generation does with what it inherited — and what still grows, under glass, at the end of the Drowned Age.

Paperback & Kindle editions — coming soon