Neon and Ruin: Outlaws of the Deep Circuit (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798185291696)

Kael never signed up to save a world. He just wanted to fix engines and go home.

One minute he's drowning in his own bathtub after one too many drinks. The next, he's coughing up glass on the shore of an impossible sea, inside a sphere the size of a planet, with circuitry burning itself into his arm and a woman named Elara pointing a plasma blade at his throat.

He's been made Administrator of the Hollow, a dying, decaying machine-world built by creators long gone, and the only thing standing between it and total collapse is a washed-up mechanic who barely understands what's happening to his own body. Elara, hardened captain of the scavenger ship Rust-Bucket, wants nothing to do with him. But the tattoos crawling up his arm say otherwise, and the remnants of the Vanguard, the armored force that's been strangling the Hollow's last free sectors, want him dead before he learns how to use them.

Together with Elara's crew, Kael has to master a power he never asked for, stay ahead of an enemy that doesn't miss, and figure out whether the connection sparking between him and Elara is just the current talking, or something neither of them saw coming.

Neon and Ruin is a fast, neon-lit science fiction adventure about found family, unlikely command, and what it costs to bring a dying world back to life, for fans of scrappy crews, slow-burn romance, and stakes that keep climbing.