The Warrior's Apprentice
The launch of the genre's most decorated character-driven saga: proof that space opera could run on wit, disability and obligation rather than firepower, and the template for every charming-disaster protagonist since.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
What is Sliding Void about?
Captain Lana Fiveworlds runs the Gravity Rose — a tramp freighter several refits past respectable — on the margins of an interstellar economy designed by and for people richer than her crew: a skedaddling ship's engineer of dubious species loyalty, an AI with opinions, and the latest acquisition, a young Welsh-flavoured barbarian rescued from a feudal ice-world who turns out to carry more plot than cargo. Hunt plays the venerable free-trader formula — Firefly's lineage by way of the Stainless Steel Rat — with cheerful velocity and a salting of class politics, in a novella-sized opening designed to hook the series quickly.
Why it matters
The launch of Hunt's independently published space-opera serial — an early example of a traditionally published genre author building a direct-to-reader series, with the Void books finding a loyal following across multiple volumes.
Where does it sit in the series?
The tramp starship Gravity Rose, Captain Lana Fiveworlds and a crew of misfits scraping a living on the wrong side of the space lanes: Hunt's freewheeling space-opera serial.
In the Guide from Sliding Void:
- Sliding Void (2011)