The Ninth Metal - (The Comet Cycle) by Benjamin Percy (Hardcover)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

"[In THE NINTH METAL] debris from a comet drops a fabulously valuable new metal on Northfall, MN., turning it into a bloody, brawling boomtown. Great characters, fine writing, totally engrossing."
--Stephen King

"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 award-winning author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf

"Whether you choose to think of him as the Elmore Leonard of rural Minnesota or the Stephen King of Science Fiction, Ben 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 best-selling author of the Caster Chronicles

"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

IT BEGAN WITH A COMET...

At first, people gazed in wonder at the radiant tear in the sky. A year later, the celestial marvel became a planetary crisis when Earth spun through the comet's debris field and the sky rained fire.

The town of Northfall, Minnesota will never be the same. Meteors cratered hardwood forests and annihilated homes, and among the wreckage a new metal was discovered. This "omnimetal" has properties that make it world-changing as an energy source...and a weapon.

John Frontier--the troubled scion of an iron-ore dynasty in Northfall--returns for his sister's wedding to find his family embroiled in a cutthroat war to control mineral rights and mining operations. His father rightly suspects foreign leaders and competing corporations of sabotage, but the greatest threat to his legacy might be the US government. Physicist Victoria Lennon was recruited by the Department of Defense to research omnimetal, but she finds herself trapped in a laboratory of nightmares. And across town, a rookie cop is investigating a murder that puts her own life in the crosshairs. She will have to compromise her moral code to bring justice to this now lawless community.

In this gut-punch of a novel, the first in his Comet Cycle, Ben Percy lays bare how a modern-day goldrush has turned the middle of nowhere into the center of everything, and how one family--the Frontiers--hopes to control it all.

Review Quotes

"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." --Publishers Weekly, starred review "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 "Whether you choose to think of him as the Elmore Leonard of rural Minnesota or the Stephen King of Science Fiction, Ben 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 best-selling author of the Caster Chronicles "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 award-winning author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf "Percy is an accomplished superhero comic writer, and that aesthetic is evident from page one. The plot is dynamic, featuring multiple viewpoints as well as corporate malfeasance, spooky cults, and family drama...all of these moving parts work together due to strong characterization...contributing to an overall cinematic feel. While the novel comes to a satisfying conclusion, this is the first book in an anticipated trilogy." --Booklist "[Percy] is deft at catching attention with sharp lines of dialogue or bursts of action." --New York Times Book Review "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." --Star Tribune "Inventive but grounded, this is a smart take on the modern resource rush." --Elle "How is [THE NINTH METAL] as a standalone novel? And how does it do at evoking the sense of something larger? The answers, in short, are "very good" and "very well"... an unexpected delight." --Tor "The engine of the novel, first of a trilogy, has a lot of moving parts but Percy keeps them all meshing nicely together with sinewy prose and strong characterization." --Financial Times --

About the Author

BENJAMIN PERCY has won a Whiting Award, a Plimpton Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, an NEA fellowship, and the iHeartRadio Award for Best Scripted Podcast. He is the author of the novels The Ninth Metal, The Dark Net, The Dead Lands, Red Moon, and The Wilding, three story collections, and an essay collection, Thrill Me. He also writes Wolverine and X-Force for Marvel Comics. He lives in Minnesota with his family.