The Vanished Birds

Nia Imani is a woman out of place and outside of time. Decades of travel through the stars are condensed into mere months for her, though the years continue to march steadily onward for everyone she has ever known. The captain of a transport ship contracted to the Umbrai corporation, she lives only for the next paycheck, until the day she meets a mysterious boy, fallen from the sky.

A boy, broken by his past, and hunted by his present. For he is one of the few born with the gift of the Jaunt. The ability to travel instantly anywhere in the universe. An ability that threatens the vicelike control of the settled worlds by corporations such as Umbrai.

Fumiko Nakajima, the great scientist responsible for the design of bird-like Stations that Umbrai uses to control vast tracts of space, has been searching for one such as he for a thousand years.

Together, they set out to protect the boy, a journey that will cross the decades and light years all the way out to the fringes of settled space where the laws of civilisation do not apply, and they will have only each other to rely on.

"Simon Jimenez's touching, bold, surprising, gorgeous debut novel...is not only the best debut novel I've read in ages, but simply one of the best SF novels in recent memory" Locus

"An astonishing debut. Deals with the grandest themes of classic sf, but with an intensely modern focus on the humanity. Ursula Le Guin.... Kim Stanley Robinson ... Simon Jimenez" Stephen Baxter, author of The Xeelee Sequence, The Long Earth Sequence with Terry Pratchett, and the sequel to War of the Worlds: The Massacre of Mankind