2022-11-08 23:35
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<p>The Xia have survived apocalypse after apocalypse. Rich and eternal as gold. Xiatoktok knows all about gold. He works in banking. Due to a little whoopsie by some very senior members of the Clan, his bank is doomed. Senior Clansfolk do not suffer losses when there are juniors who can suffer them instead. Best case scenario? If the bank collapses, he, and everyone he ever loved, are dead. Xiatoktok is not optimistic about the best case scenario.</p> <p>Still, life in the Clan has prepared him for this. Xiatoktok's core competencies include accounting, conspiracy, fraud, emotional manipulation, kidnaping, blackmail, poisoning, murder, impeccable grooming and being a temporal vampire. An over achiever, by Xia standards. Most can barely manage double entry bookkeeping.</p> <p>Saving his life will be complicated by the four way war about to start around him. A war where at least two of the sides have weapons that really shouldn't exist in this epoch. Weapons they couldn't possibly have made themselves. Fortunately, Xiatoktok has a plan. Step one- Steal his bank. That should buy him a day.</p> <p>Updates M-W-F.</p> <p>This is a world where humanity has to rebuild and grow between apocalypses. Each time, they build on the scavenged remains of what came before. A soldier with a ray gun can melt an enemy with invisible, radioactive flames, just before catching a musket ball to the head. The musketeer is in for a bad day too- the City in front of him has taken to launching dead cows infected with engineered plagues from their catapults. Catapults they could afford, once the helpful bankers of the Xia Clan explained sovereign debt to them. Shame that even the Xia have forgotten how to make antibiotics.</p> <p>Set shortly after the events in To The Far Shore, this is a stand alone book. Reading the former will add context, but it is not necessary to understand what is going on in this book.</p>
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