Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

Blog cover reveals

A Space Opera Twist on Joan of Arc: Revealing The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang

By

Published on January 12, 2022

Photo credit: Chris Kammerud
The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang
Photo credit: Chris Kammerud

We’re thrilled to share the cover of Neon Yang’s The Genesis of Misery—a space opera twist on Joan of Arc’s story that explores the nature of truth, the power of belief, and the interplay of both in the stories we tell ourselves.

The Genesis of Misery publishes September 27, 2022 with Tor Books.

An immersive, electrifying space-fantasy from Neon Yang, author of The Black Tides of Heaven, full of high-tech space battles and political machinations, starring a queer and diverse array of pilots, princesses, and prophetic heirs.

This is the story of Misery Nomaki (she/they) – a nobody from a nowhere mining planet who possesses the rare stone-working powers of a saint. Unfortunately, these saint-like abilities also manifest in those succumbing to voidmadness, like that which killed Misery’s mother. Knowing they aren’t a saint but praying they aren’t voidmad, Misery keeps quiet about their power for years, while dreaming and scheming up ways off their Forge-forsaken planet.

But when the voice of an angel, or a very convincing delusion, leads Misery to the center of the Empire, they find themself trapped between two powerful and dangerous factions, each hoping to use Misery to win a terrible war.

Still waiting to be convinced of their own divinity and secretly training with a crew of outlaws and outcasts, Misery grows close to a rebel royal, Lady Alodia Lightning, who may know something of saints and prophecy herself. The voice that guides Misery grows bolder by the day, and it seems the madness is catching…

Buy the Book

The Genesis of Misery

The Genesis of Misery

Cover art by Angela Wang; Design by Lesley Worrell

Neon Yang (they/them) is the author of the Tensorate series of novellas from Tordotcom Publishing (The Red Threads of Fortune, The Black Tides of Heaven, The Descent of Monsters, and The Ascent to Godhood). Their work has been shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Lambda Literary and Locus awards, while the Tensorate novellas were a Tiptree honoree in 2018. They have over two dozen works of short fiction published in venues including Tor.com, Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and Strange Horizons.

Neon attended the 2013 class of Clarion West, and received their MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia in 2016. In previous incarnations, they have been a molecular biologist, a writer for animation, comics and games, a science communicator, and a journalist for one of Singapore’s national papers. Neon is currently based out of Singapore. They are queer and non-binary.

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Tor.com

Author

Learn More About Tor.com