The Liberators Begins: Prison, a Sci-Fi Novel About a Prison With No Fences

I have a new book out, and it starts a new series.

Prison is Book One of The Liberators. It is available now on Kindle for $2.99 and in paperback for $10.99, and it is in Kindle Unlimited.

This post is spoiler-free. Everything below comes from the opening chapters.

A Prison With No Fences

Restoration Research Site 11 has no fences, no outer walls, and no guards outside. It does not need them. It is grown into a basalt cliff on Vekris, a world where a copper sun never leaves one horizon and the stars never move on the other.

"The world was the wall."

The building is alive. Its walls rise and fall like someone sleeping in the next room. Its floors give slightly underfoot and remember every step. Its doors part before you reach them. Every room is held at the same temperature, every corridor curves, and everything that happens is recorded.

It is also unfailingly polite.

Two Prisoners

Vorrak was a Kheth'var warrior who fought beside humans in Earth's war against the Accord. On Vekris the staff call him Unit-Forty-Seven. After 1,847 soft-spoken sessions of "reconditioning", he surfaces as himself for only minutes at a time, and he has learned to do it without letting his body show.

Thomas Reddick is sixty-two and has spent six years becoming the most harmless man in the building. He tends a plant that is almost a tomato. He counts every day of custody. On each prime-numbered day he lets himself memorize exactly one new thing, because primes are the only thing in the building that cannot be edited.

Neither knows the other is alive. Then they pass in a corridor, and Reddick recognizes a scar.

Thirty Letters a Week

They cannot speak. Every room is listening. What they have is an old prisoners' tap code: the alphabet laid out in a square, tap the row, pause, tap the column. A trowel on stone. Shears on a bucket. In a greenhouse full of cameras, that comes to about thirty letters a week.

"In a cell, he had said, time is the one thing you have plenty of."

The Second Glass

The third point of view belongs to the interrogator. Lead Specialist Mor'vex has been on Vekris for thirty-one years. He opens every session with the same two words. He pours a second glass of water for a subject who never drinks it, and he washes both glasses himself.

He has noticed that his subject and the old human have found each other. He has not reported it.

And someone worse is on his way to Vekris.

What Kind of Book Is It?

Prison is quiet. Most of it takes place in a handful of rooms, and the tension comes from surveillance, conversation, and patience rather than firepower. If you come to my books for fleets and battles, this one is a change of scale.

If you like any of these, I think you will feel at home:

• The Shawshank Redemption for the long patience of a prisoner with a routine
• Andor, the prison arc, for a clean, quiet, well-run place that is terrifying because it works
• The Murderbot Diaries for a mind taking itself back
• Ancillary Justice for identity under an empire that edits people

There is no strong language and no sexual content, and very little violence. It does deal with long captivity, psychological coercion, and grief.

Do You Need to Read Kureai Atlas First?

No. Prison begins a new series and stands on its own. Everything you need is on the page.

The Liberators is set in the same universe as the Kureai Atlas trilogy, and if you have read it you already know Vorrak and Reddick. After Earth, these two have a journey of their own ahead of them. Prison is where it begins.

If you plan to read both and want no hints about earlier events, read Kureai Atlas first.

Where to Get It

• Prison on Kindle, $2.99
• Prison in paperback, $10.99
• Free to read with Kindle Unlimited

You can meet the prisoners and staff of Site 11 on The Liberators series page, and there are more recommendations in my guide to sci-fi prison and captivity books.

If you read it, a short honest review on Amazon in these first weeks helps more than anything else I can do. Thank you.