Where to start
Begin with Book One
Sliding Void
Meet Captain Lana Fiveworlds and her crew — a debt problem and a gift for trouble.
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Reading order
1
Sliding Void
Captain Lana Fiveworlds has a ship, a debt problem and a gift for turning bad luck into worse luck.
2
Transference Station
The Gravity Rose docks at the biggest trading hub in the free systems — with a suspicious mission waiting.
3
Red Sun Bleeding
A routine mining job on a hostile jungle world turns to survival horror under a dying red sun.
4
Anomalous Thrust
A slave-owning aristocracy, ruthless rebels and a moon-sized alien vessel promising unimaginable wealth — and death.
5
Hell Fleet
Lana's free-trader troubles collide with Commander Vega's military nightmare as entire sectors go dark.
6
Voyage of the Void-lost
Grave-robbing dead civilisations sounds profitable — until the universe starts collecting interest.
Sliding Void — FAQ
Which Sliding Void book should I read first?
Most readers should begin with book one, Sliding Void — a fully-voiced novella you can read in an evening. If you'd rather start with a full-length novel, Anomalous Thrust (book four) is a fine alternative.
Do I need to read them in order?
You'll get the most out of them in order, since the deep-time mystery builds across the series — but each novel is built to work as a satisfying standalone. The first three novellas form a tight trilogy, collected as the omnibus Void All The Way Down.
Are these space opera or military SF?
Mostly small-crew, working-ship space opera in the Firefly / Brian Daley tradition, with a precursor-civilisation mystery running underneath. Book five, Hell Fleet, pivots toward military SF with a naval-officer point of view and a full interstellar war.
How many books are there?
Six novels — three novellas (Sliding Void, Transference Station, Red Sun Bleeding) and three full-length novels (Anomalous Thrust, Hell Fleet, Voyage of the Void-lost) — plus the omnibus Void All The Way Down, which collects the first three.
Are the aliens actually alien?
That's part of the point. The crew alone includes a crab-shaped kaggen and a green-scaled skirl; later books add the enslaved girrish and the amphibious Quazzie Imperium, while the vanished Heezy drive the long mystery. The series works hard to make alien minds genuinely difficult to translate.
Where can I buy the books?
Direct from the author at StephenHunt.net — use the Buy Direct buttons throughout this site.
Glossary · sample entries
The Gravity Rose
Lana Fiveworlds' freighter — four thousand feet of mismatched shipyards, and the anchor location of the whole series.
Hyperspace / the sliding void
The subspace medium that makes faster-than-light travel possible; a ship survives it wrapped in a Minkowski Field.
The Edge
The frontier region of explored space, where the Triple Alliance's writ runs thin.
The Triple Alliance
The interstellar polity founded by humans, kaggens and skirls — the closest thing to law out among the lanes.
The Heezy
A vanished galactic precursor civilisation whose works still litter the void long after they themselves are gone.
The Great Filter
A literal barrier structure at the edge of known space — and the stage for the sixth novel.
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