Allen Rickson is a fifteen-year-old animal trainer living on Nirvana, an ancient colony planet of Earth. In the aftermath of an early locust swarm, he is drafted into one of the first armies his world has seen in nearly a thousand years. Can Allen keep himself alive while keeping his sounder of swine from finding their way into the army's cookpots?
A tiny bit of history:
Nirvana may well be home to the last humans. With that possibility in mind, a rogue AI decided millennia ago to take a hand and 'help' humans develop into a less self-destructive race. Part of this process included reducing the technology of humans on Nirvana back to the stone age by literally removing their access to metal. At the same time, the AI allows humanity to retain most of their knowledge and history in the form of that ancient technology, paper.
'Set in Stone' is planned to be a series of several books on a rational stonepunk theme.