Conquest: Ravages of Honor Book 1
About this ebook
Months of isolation are almost over for Darien, House Dobromil’s misbehaving heir, as he and his crew serve out a punishment detail. A mysterious ship appears and heads into imperial space, wreaking havoc in its path. It crashes on one of the emperor’s planets, a world that is off-limits. Despite the possibility that the mysterious ship might be an intriguing lure baiting a trap, Darien has a duty to render aid. During the rescue of the ship’s sole survivor, Darien discovers secrets that could destroy the emperor’s power over the Houses of the Imperium.
But when the emperor demands that House Dobromil turn the survivor over, Darien finds himself caught between duty and the ravages of honor. The survivor--a woman whose name he doesn’t even know--is the only proof Darien has of the emperor’s secret wormhole generator and its success. The only way to save Syteria from the emperor’s tender mercies is a solution without honor.
With the emperor and House Dobromil three breaths from war, the survival of the donai hangs in the balance. Will Syteria prove to be the spark that ignites an interstellar war or the key to the donai’s survival? Or will the emperor’s hatred of humans lead to a genocide that will condemn the donai to extinction?
Cultures and passions clash in this epic adventure featuring genetic engineering, nanotechnology, galactic empires, feuding noble houses, and court intrigues. Conquest is the first in a trilogy that is part of a larger series, but can be read as a standalone. This intense story includes fully described sex and uneven power dynamics. The world of the donai is a violent one, including the use of weapons, hunting of animals and people, rape, torture, slavery, and political machinations.
About the author
Monalisa's writing career really began when she taught herself English by reading and translating Heinlein juveniles at the public library. She would copy sentences in English, translate them into Romanian, and then write out new words ten times, filling entire notebooks and giving herself a helluva writing callous. After she devoured the juvenile section, she moved on to the grown-up books.
Her second writing career was technical, scientific, and academic in nature but she left it all behind when she decided to fulfill her life-long dream to write science fiction.
She made her first professional sale to Kristine Katherine Rusch, a short story called Pretending to Sleep, but her first published work was Bellona's Gift in Terra Nova. Since then she's self-published novels and novellas in her Ravages of Honor epic space opera series and her short stories have been published in Laurell K. Hamilton's Fantastic Hope and several Baen anthologies including The Founder Effect, World Breakers, Robosoldiers, and The Ross 248 Project.
While space opera is her favorite genre to write, she considers herself genre-fluid and has written both hard and military science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, Romance, as well as contemporary Literature.
She is currently working on sequels, both to Threading the Needle and in her Ravages of Honor series.
Monalisa graduated from ASU with dreams of becoming an astrophysicist but went to work for Motorola instead. She designed and tested semiconductors, worked on an engineering master’s degree, and then decided to tackle the hardest job on Earth--motherhood. When her kids were old enough to go to school she kept herself busy by doing volunteer work at a hospital and was recruited to run radiation oncology and nuclear medicine research programs. www.monalisafoster.com
