Book One of the Aira cycle
A post-apocalyptic detective story by Ivo Renn
For eleven years she believed she was the last of her kind. Then a stranger told her she was wrong. By dawn he was dead.
The novel and its visual companion. EPUB and PDF, downloaded the moment you pay.
The sky burned white one night and came down as ash. What is left of the city lives under a fallen overpass: tarpaulin between concrete pillars, water sold by the barrel, a sunrise the color of old rust.
Aira has survived here by being unremarkable: a patched jacket, a lowered head, eleven years of never saying aloud what she hears in the dark.
Then a stranger walks in off the wastes, tells her she is not alone, and is dead by morning. She is the only one in Marn who understands what that means.
The wall and the old town on the hill belong to the people upstairs. Everything under the overpass belongs to everyone else. The water comes from one pump, and the whole story turns on who controls it.
One purchase, two books: the novel to read, and a landscape album of the world it happens in. Turn the pages with the arrows, or swipe.
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She does not sleep. She does not forget. She has watched this city bury its dead for eleven years and has walked past every one of them, because a woman who can help is a woman somebody eventually notices.
The book is a murder investigation and it plays fair. The clues are all on the page. So is the reason Aira cannot simply walk away from this one.
Fifteen people share this city with her: the ones under the overpass, and the ones behind the wall. Point at a face to see who it is, or tap it on a phone.
Fourteen chapters and an epilogue, around 80,000 words. A complete story with an ending, not a sample. Every chapter opens on its own image.
A 63-page landscape album: the city from above, fourteen places, fifteen people, eighteen objects, and every chapter in one page. It gives away no part of the ending.
The novel as a reflowable EPUB for Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books and your phone, and as a PDF laid out like a printed book. The companion as a landscape PDF for screen.
Downloaded straight after payment, from a page that stays yours. No subscription, no app, no account to maintain.
From 13 September the book runs as a series of short episodes, two a week, on Sunday and Wednesday. The same city, the same faces, the same voices, in one minute at a time.
The series covers the first eleven chapters. It does not say who killed the stranger at the north wall. That is in the book.
The episodes run on YouTube. On Instagram, Aira steps out of the story: the same face, photographed as a model rather than as a character.
A note on how the pictures were made. The images in both books were generated with AI image models, directed shot by shot from an original art bible and character sheets written for this story. The story, the world and the characters are the author's own.
$5
The novel and the visual companion together.
Checkout opens with the first episode, on 13 September.
Card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal. All three files download straight after payment.
Fourteen days to change your mind, no questions asked.
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