benassaya

In the year 2182, citizens of a dying Earth flee to a distant promised land in a massive colony ship, the Arka III. They do not reach their intended destination...

In the not-too-distant future, the Earth has been destroyed, its orbit withering and its citizens desperate to escape to the stars. The solution? The Arka project, massive vessels bound for the distant planet of Leonis.

When the passengers of Arka III awaken from their long intergalactic journey, they realize they’re not on Leonis. Not only that, their journey has taken much longer than the planned two hundred years, and has landed them in a starless, seemingly endless void. Eric Rives, the ship’s second-in-command, and his partner Jia Tang are sent on an exploratory mission to investigate the dark labyrinth that surrounds them...but what they find is beyond belief.

Young French space opera novelist Romain Benassaya adapts his own 2018 novel, Pyramides, available now for the first time in English featuring lushly illustrative art by Joan Urgell.

Praise for Romain Benassaya (translated from French)
＂...in line with the great novels of the genre such as Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, or Hyperion by Dan Simmons.＂ - Le Tourne Page
＂The author lets us imagine a much larger universe, which we could populate at will. A true science fiction phenomenon.＂ - SyFantasy.fr
＂...damn I love this universe! It’s full of mystery, full of promise too, and I can’t help but see in the author a form of reincarnation of a modern Arthur C. Clarke...＂ Lorkhan and the Bad Kind
＂What a frantic storytelling. Twists, cliffhangers, a steady pace. Worthy of a great cinematographic series. The novel places the human at the heart of the plot. Charismatic characters quite mistreated, credible extraterrestrials, surprising genetically modified creatures. Everything is there. In supercolor!＂ - fan review, Babelio.com

Romain Benassaya was born in Nice in 1984. After studying linguistics in Paris and obtaining a master’s degree, he taught French in Canada, then in Uganda, before settling in Bangkok. Passionate about science fiction, and by his own admission deeply influenced by Frank Herbert’s Dune and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, he naturally turned to space opera . Pyramides (Critic, 2018; Pocket, 2020), his second novel after Arca (Critic, 2016; Pocket, 2018), was acclaimed by critics. With his third novel, Les Naufragés de Velloa(Critic, 2019), he continues his exploration of infinite space but above all of the infinite complexity of the human soul.