Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Categories
Science fiction

NO RETURN

Zachary Jernigan

On Jeroun, there is no question as to whether God exists--only what his intentions are.

Under the looming judgment of Adrash and his ultimate weapon--a string of spinning spheres beside the moon known as The Needle--warring factions of white and black suits prove their opposition to the orbiting god with the great fighting tournament of Danoor, on the far side of Jeroun's only inhabitable continent. From the Thirteenth Order of Black Suits comes Vedas, a young master of martial arts, laden with guilt over the death of one of his students. Traveling with him are Churls, a warrior woman and mercenary haunted by the ghost of her daughter, and Berun, a constructed man made of modular spheres possessed by the foul spirit of his creator. Together they must brave their own demons, as well as thieves, mages, beasts, dearth, and hardship on the perilous road to Danoor, and the bloody sectarian battle that is sure to follow. On the other side of the world, unbeknownst to the travelers, Ebn and Pol of the Royal Outbound Mages (astronauts using Alchemical magic to achieve space flight) have formed a plan to appease Adrash and bring peace to the planet. But Ebn and Pol each have their own clandestine agendas--which may call down the wrath of the very god they hope to woo. Who may know the mind of God? And who in their right mind would seek to defy him? Gritty, erotic, and fast-paced, author Zachary Jernigan takes you on a sensuous ride through a world at the knife-edge of salvation and destruction, in one of the year's most exciting fantasy epics. Zachary Jernigan is a 34-year-old, typically shaven-headed writer and narrator from Northern Arizona. He has lived in AZ since 1990, with relatively short stints in Utah, Oregon, Maine, and Chile.

Available products
Book Published 2013-03-05 by Night Shade Books/Skyhorse

Comments

Pure genius. . . A visionary, violent, sexually charged, mystical novel.

A science-fantasy epic that's as of a much perverse hybrid as it is an homage to an earlier era when those genres weren't so strictly segregated, No Return is set on a world that bears wizards and astronauts equally. It also pulls no punches in its rich, visceral depictions of sexuality, martial arts, punk energy, and the philosophical quandaries of power and identity that speculative fiction uniquely exploits--and that few up-and-coming speculative writers outside Jernigan tackle with such guts.

Zachary Jernigan's genre-defying epic raises the bar for literary speculative fiction. It has the sweep of Frank Herbert's Dune and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, with a decadent, beautifully rendered vision all its own. One of the most impressive debuts of recent years.

Zachary Jernigan writes with a flair for the weird and makes it endearing enough for readers to feel familiar with it. No Return is a magnificent debut that straddles fantasy and SF genres seamlessly and makes itself into a jewel faceting both fields. I completely loved this debut and will have very high hopes from Mr. Jernigan for all his future works based on the raw talent that is showcased within.

Vivid, varied, and violent. At once beautiful and terrible to behold.

...No Return needs to be noticed. There is so much more to it than the accoutrement would imply. Populated with a fair amount of face punching, as coded by the visceral cover, it contains a tenderness and at times overt eroticism that's often ignored in science fiction and fantasy. Zachary Jernigan has something unique to say, a voice we're not hearing from anywhere else. I dearly hope more readers, and award afficianados, take an opportunity to listen to him.

A hypnotic sort of read the evokes a lot of the same awe and wonder I felt reading Gene Wolfe's stuff; the Elizabeth Hand blurb tells you all you need to know. If you love the shock and awe of science-fantasy and don't care much for paint-by-numbers plots, pick this up.

The greatest pleasure a reader can have is for their expectations to be confounded, to find their eye drawn word by word down a different path to the one anticipated. Genre fiction is too often comfort food, and the palate can grow complacent. No Return is not a complacent book and it took me somewhere unexpected and new.

Pulls no punches in its rich, visceral depictions of sexuality, martial arts, punk energy, and the philosophical quandaries of power and identity that speculative fiction uniquely exploits—and that few up-and-coming speculative writers outside Jernigan tackle with such guts.

Probably the best and the most imaginative debut speculative fiction novel of 2013. Its pages are full of wonders, weirdness, sex and violence. It's a perfect example of what a talented speculative fiction author can achieve when he has enough imagination. It's difficult to imagine that other authors could achieve this kind of level of originality, style and depth with their debut novels this year.