Venus has become a world of Zeppelin cities where merchants fly carbon-fiber airships. Whalers harpoon tin behemoths that rise from the murky depths. And the only woman who can save it all from ruin is being hunted by a man willing to do anything to seize her father's empire. Privilege is a double-edged sword. As a young noblewoman, Willamette Lolofi has an education and the freedom to indulge her curiosities. But the political marriage she faces won't let her stop the looming threat she has discovered. Countless cities, towns, and estates ride the winds of The Drift, a hospitable layer in the Venusian atmosphere, but they will eventually fall to ruin. As the tin behemoths that lift precious minerals from the depths grow scarce, conflicts drive the Commonwealth ever faster toward collapse. Willamette is determined to avoid that tragic fate. She manipulates her parents into arranging a marriage that just might let her take action . but then a bloody coup by Colonel Kofi upends everything. In order to consolidate power, Kofi must eliminate the only person alive who can claim the right to rule the Commonwealth. If Willamette has any chance of saving millions of people in The Drift, she must rally a menagerie of misfits to accomplish the unthinkable.

A World Adrift

Few images evoke a more powerful or frightening reaction than that of the assassin. Silently creeping into your room while you sleep, they plunge a pick deep inside your brain, or fill your snoring nostrils with poisonous vapour. Or perhaps skilled fingers from the shadows strike a vital point during mid-step; the coroners say it was a heart attack. Assassins are people to be feared, no doubt. But what do they fear? What do they dream of? What life, what world, are they longing to achieve with their actions? Is the killing just a job or is there some deeper motivation that drives them? And what happens when it all goes wrong? In Assassins' Canon the full gamut of would-be killers is explored: gangsters, henchmen, soldiers, newly-weds, the reluctant, the willing, the skilled, and the novice. And, for better or worse, all must bear the consequences of their choices.

Livres