AUREALIS AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVELLA
Four generations ago a generation ship crashed into the sands of Savene.
Since then, its survivors have eked out an existence in the planet’s hostile desert. Yet, the tech is failing, the sands are encroaching, and people are dying. Rescue is still generations away—if it comes at all.
But Marsa is a survivor. And an outcast. Infected with the Chrysalis—a disease that grants its carriers uncanny abilities—she keeps her distance from her dwindling community.
Until an old friend’s dying wish sends her and a young boy across Savene’s inhospitable sands in search of something Marsa had thought she’d long forgotten. Hope.
Disability Themes
Science Fantasy, Hopepunk, Space Opera, Space Colonisation
About The Author
Nikky Lee is an award-winning author who grew up as a barefoot 90s kid in Perth, Western Australia on Whadjuk Noongar Country. She now lives in Aotearoa New Zealand with a husband, a dog, and a couch potato cat.
In her free time, she writes speculative fiction, often burning the candle at both ends to explore fantastic worlds, mine asteroids and meet wizards. She's had over two dozen stories published in magazines, anthologies and on the radio.
Her short fiction has won three Aurealis Awards, with her novelette Dingo & Sister winning Best Young Adult Short Story and Best Fantasy Novella in 2020, and her novella Once We Flew winning Best Science Fiction Novella in 2023. In 2021, she received a Ditmar Award for Best New Talent.
Her debut novel The Rarkyn's Familiar won the 2023 Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Youth Novel, three Indie Ink Awards, and Bronze in Young Adult Fiction at the Foreward INDIES Book of the Year Awards.
