The Annunciate - Hardcover

Severna Park, author of the related SF novels Speaking Dreams and Hand of Prophecy, turns to a new universe in The Annunciate. ThreeSys is a three-star system, and each star has 11 human-settled worlds. The humans are separated not only by vast distances but also by technology, divided into Jackless, Jacked, and Meshed. The Jackless have no access to the virtual reality of the Jacked. And neither caste has access to the nanotech-sculpted dimension that the Meshed can enter to control and manipulate them.

When Jackless and Jacked rise against their overlords, three Meshed survive and struggle to retain their mastery with Staze, a potent, immediately addictive drug that traps users in an overwhelming dream. But the dream may be the entrance to another world--one inhabited by a mysterious and powerful being that wishes to enter our universe. Is it the Unknown Child, the long-prophesied savior of ThreeSys? Or is it an alien predator that will destroy humanity?

The Annunciate is an interesting, ambitious consideration of love and need, power and responsibility, and the complexities of human bonds. --Cynthia Ward

Severna Park has been a lecturer and reader for the Women in Science Fiction program at the University of Maryland. She has also been an itinerant artist, a world traveler, a political carpetbagger, a public school teacher, and a book reviewer. She lives with her partner of sixteen years outside Baltimore, Maryland.