Blood Fields — David Walker

In the era following the Great Alignment, planet Earth is under the despotic rule of the Global Homeland United. GHU officials have accused small-time hustler Cronin Pahl of crimes against the State and forced his young son, Oliver, into the Order of Misrah, a shadowy priesthood devoted to the GHU's bloodthirsty emperor.

Cronin hatches a desperate plan to save Seiji and escapes Earth to Nudubai, an opulent asteroid mining colony fraught with danger and opportunity. But Cronin's mission is derailed by circumstances and by his own failures. Will he conquer himself in time to save his son?

Blood Fields is a mind-blowing and spectacular deep-dive into the futuristic world we first encountered in "Wet Work," Book 1 of "The Sands of Misrah." In haunting prose so cinematic it makes your eyeballs ache, Walker brilliantly captures the harrowing Dark Sci-Fi world of his characters, and the knife's edge that fugitives in a hostile world stand on. A wildly entertaining story that glows with the intensity of the greatest Sci-Fi, "Blood Fields" takes the genre to a whole new level, in a fearless tale that will grip even the coldest human heart.