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THE NINTH METAL

Benjamin Percy

Book 1 of The Comet Cycle

From award-winning author Benjamin Percy comes an explosive, breakout speculative thriller in which a powerful new metal arrives on Earth in the wake of a meteor shower, triggering a massive new “gold rush” in the Midwest and turning life as we know it on its head. The first of a cycle of novels set in a shared universe.

It began with a comet. When it came into view on a close pass by Earth, people took off work, gathering on sidewalks and in parking lots to watch it burn by. One year later, Earth spun into the debris field the comet left behind. The worldwide effects of the meteor shower are yet to be known, but in the first book of the Comet Cycle, Minnesota seemed to bear the brunt of the damage: meteors annihilated barns and silos, cratered pastures and hardwood forests, tore up county highways, and evaporated one small town in an instant.

At first, it is a colossal disaster. Until the people of Minnesota notice deposits of unusual metal in the comet's debris. Not gold, silver, copper, tin, iron or any of the noble metals, it's a previously unknown ninth metal: omnimetal. With high-density charging capabilities and conductive properties that can change the world as an energy source, the deposit might be the best thing that ever happened to the northern section of the state, where the economy has been dying for a long time. Or it might be the worst.

It is then that the “gold rush” begins. Farmers sell their metal-rich land for millions. Comet-worshipping cults set up compounds and repeat the phrase “Metal is” as their mantra. Roughnecks flood the town, hungry for work and trouble. Prostitutes flourish. Businesses rise. Families are divided. Saudis bid against the Chinese on land grabs. Bodies lie in shallow graves. As witnessed when oil was discovered in the Bakken Formation of North Dakota, the heartland in our story goes from the middle of nowhere to the center of everything. And one family—the Frontiers—hopes to control it all.

Benjamin Percy has won a Whiting Award, a Plimpton Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the author of the novels The Dead Lands, Red Moon, and The Wilding, three story collections, and an essay collection, Thrill Me. He also writes the Green Arrow and Teen Titans series for DC Comics.
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Published 2021-06-01 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Comments

" wildly entertaining and highly original melange of northern Minnesota lore and slam-bang near-future SF action Percy's dead-on local color, strong central characters, and well-integrated flashbacks into the making of a modern samurai will delight and entertain both comics fans and serious science fiction readers. This is an impressive series starter." (starred review)

"Take one part dystopia, one part sci-fi, two parts apocalypse, then ride them roughshod through a bleak and bloody western, and it still wouldn't get close to what Ben Percy does here, which is blow open the core of humanity's dark heart." – Marlon James, Booker Prize winning author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“When Benjamin Percy publishes a novel, I have got to read that novel. THE NINTH METAL continues his streak of thrilling, incisive genre bending goodness. It's a sci-fi novel, a crime novel and a super-hero novel, too. Audacious and intelligent and exactly what I was dying to read.” – Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling

“THE NINTH METAL, by Benjamin Percy: Debris from a comet drops a fabulously valuable new metal on Northfall, MINN., turning it into a bloody, brawling boomtown. Great characters, fine writing, totally engrossing. Available June 1st.” – Stephen King (on Twitter) Read more...

"...a smart take on the modern resource rush." (The Best New Books to Read in Summer 20021) Read more...

Film rights optioned by the Russo Brothers (Captain America, The Avengers)

"... immersive and imaginative ... a clever amalgamation of speculative fiction and family drama, of supercharged characters and regular folk, encompassing various viewpoints in a highly cinematic narrative." (summer fiction recommendations) Read more...

“dynamic . . . vivid . . . cinematic.”

“Ben Percy will serve you the impossible—and by the end of every chapter, you will believe it and feel it as truth. Whether you choose to think of him as the Elmore Leonard of rural Minnesota or the Stephen King of Science Fiction, Percy—with his extraordinary and unrelenting eye—dishes up humanity like some kind of otherworldly blue plate special, at once deeply familiar and wildly new.” – Margaret Stohl, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

UK: Hodder & Stoughton

“Immersive and imaginative a clever amalgamation of speculative fiction and family drama, of supercharged characters and regular folk, encompassing various viewpoints in a highly cinematic narrative.” Read more...