Deception Well

Book Two of the Nanotech Succession

Linda Nagata

Lot is a young man haunted by the past. As a boy he came with his father’s fanatic army to the sky city of Silk, perched on the column of a space elevator 200 miles above the planet known as Deception Well. Battle ensued, thousands were killed, and Lot’s father disappeared, while Lot was made a ward—or a prisoner—of the Silken government. Now he wants the truth. The people of Silk claim the wild, unsettled world of Deception Well is a deadly stew of runaway nanotech, the fallout of an ancient, alien war. But Lot’s father once visited the planet’s lush surface and survived. Jupiter Apolinario was a charismatic leader who preached that the Well offered life, not death. He promised his disciples they would find refuge and an ecstatic communion when they followed him to the planet’s surface.

Lot isn’t so sure—and then human “ghosts” are videoed, walking within the ruins of a long-abandoned settlement at the foot of the elevator column. Is it a trick? Or is it redemption? Lot is determined to find out. But he is a charismatic too, with a seductive presence. As the city’s resources run low, conflict ignites around him, and when Silk is rocked by revolt Lot is forced to flee. His only refuge: the haunted world of Deception Well, where he will discover a past deeper than he’d ever imagined, and a razor-thin dividing line between bliss and damnation.

Enjoy all four books of the Nanotech Succession, a collection of stand-alone novels exploring the rise of nanotechnology and the strange and fascinating future that follows.

The Nanotech Succession:

• The Bohr Maker

• Deception Well

• Vast

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BVC Publication date: July 2011

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