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For generations, the Newcastles, Mackenzies, Atkinses, Hyltons, and Hollinses have endured the hard red soil of Mars—surviving by individual grit, intense family loyalty, and free market trade. Scarred by World War III and Earth’s long, violent aftermath, they built farms, raised domes, forged alliances, and carried old grudges to a new world. Together, the Martians have forged a frontier society that is complex, ornery, and rooted in the freedom of the Texas soil from which many of the clans sprang.
Trade with the nearby Chinese enclaves brought prosperity for a time. But as Beijing’s reach lengthens, trade becomes tribute—and tribute becomes force.
When Chinese armored columns grind across Karl’s Ramp and convoys are torn apart in the Chaos, Mars is plunged into war. Robinson City’s dome falls in fire and blood. The Burrows holds out under siege until supply convoys break through beneath burning skies. At Lowell and Meltwater, city shields collapse and the red Martian soil melts and flows like blood as the Martian plains are seared with plasma fire.
The clans face an empire pressing down from above and rivalries tearing them apart from within. Senators brawl in council halls, mobs surge through the streets, and old feuds erupt—even on the football field. Out of devastation, a fragile coalition is born: uneasy, volatile, but fierce enough to strike back. Freightliners become fortresses. Drones become weapons. Family honor hardens into resistance.
From isolated domes to the vast Martian plains to the black sky above, war sparks into revolution and a desperate struggle to forge a nation on an alien world men now call home.
A vast chronicle of clans and civilizations, of families too proud to yield, too divided to trust, and too determined to be ruled.
“Tough-as-nails pioneer families and a great sci-fi war story wrapped up in a huge epic of Mars’s fight for freedom. Loved it.”—Larry Correia, New York Times best-selling author of American Paladin and Monster Hunter International
“Just plain cool.”—Kurt Schlichter, author of People's Republic
“Corcoran looks at how our current cultural tendencies will diverge given the opportunities and constraints of colonizing a new world. I was caught up in the squabbles of those rugged individualists, and hoping they'd pull together in time.”—Karl K. Gallagher, author of the Torchship Trilogy
“Summoning tactical acumen, bloody-minded heroics, bug-nutty creativity, and sheer audacity, the citizens of the Nine Cities of Mars mount an astonishing resistance that brings the Earth's two great superpowers to loggerheads and births a new civilization in the bargain.”—J. Daniel Sawyer, best-selling author of When She Was Gone
“Corcoran takes the classic Heinlein juveniles off into the corner where he roughs them up with reality, complexity, and a refreshingly even hand toward the difficulties of balancing governance and freedom.”—J.A. Sutherland, author of the Alexis Carew series
“Engineering and explosions—everything I expect and love in a Corcoran science fiction adventure!”—Daniel Humphreys, author Z-Day series
“What you'd get if you cross-pollinated David Drake and Neal Stephenson, but Corcoran has tapped into a vein entirely his own—part hard science, part political saga, and all high-octane imagination.”—Rob Kroese, author of Mercury Falls