The Harvest: Out Now

“This strong first installment rises above the usual dystopian fare thanks to Wendig’s knack for disturbing imagery and scorching prose.” —Publishers Weekly

“Wendig brilliantly tackles the big stuff—class, economics, identity, love, and social change—in a fast-paced tale that never once loses its grip on pure storytelling excitement. Well-played, Wendig. Well-played.” —Libba Bray, author of the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, Going Bovine, and The Diviners

“A tense dystopian tale made more strange and terrifying by its present-day implications.” —Booklist

“Under the Empyrean Sky is like a super-charged, genetically modified hybrid of The Grapes of Wrath and Star Wars. Wendig delivers a thrilling, fast-paced adventure set in a future agri-dystopia. Fascinating world building, engaging and deep characters, smooth, electric prose.” —John Hornor Jacobs, author of The Twelve-Fingered Boy

“A thoroughly imagined environmental nightmare with taut pacing and compelling characters that will leave readers eager for more.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A lunatic, gene-spliced, biofueled thriller. Fear the corn.” —Tom Pollock, author of The City’s Son

“An imaginative, page-turning adventure that will delight science fiction fans and have them impatiently waiting for the next installment.” —Joelle Charbonneau, author of The Testing Trilogy

IT IS COMPLETE.

The Heartland Trilogy is now a finished, published thing.

Because the third book, The Harvest, is out now:

Hardcover | Paperback | eBook | Audible | Audio CD

It’s exciting, because this is the first series I’ve truly finished — it’s the first one to make it out of the gate as a unified story told over several books.

Writing a trilogy or a whole series is tricky business — it’s a fine art between balancing the long con of far-flung planning but also course correcting between books and changing the story as you go. Some things about the Heartland series ended where I always expected, and some things didn’t. Some characters made it that I thought would perish — and *coughs into hand* some who I thought would survive didn’t cross the finish line with the rest of us.

There’s all kinds of things going on in this series — it’s a series about power, nature, and youth. About class warfare and oligarchy. About the struggle to do something real and change the world when you don’t want to. It’s a series about growing up in a world of oppression and war. And in a way, a series about growing up poor.

(You can actually find out a little about the origins of the series in this “Big Idea” post over at Scalzi’s WHATEVER joint, where I unpack how this cornpunk series came to mind and why I wanted to write it so bad.)

But it’s also got bloodthirsty corn, love triangles rhombuses, people turning into plants, hoboes, floating cities, arranged marriages, talking birds, multiple Pegasuses, robots, skyboats, piss-blizzards (sorry, “pollen drift”), tornadoes, a fallen city, a serial killer, and more. It’s young adult, though obviously I hope it appeals to adults, too.

I also posit that if you’re looking to see how well I’ll handle writing Star Wars: Aftermath, then this might be the series you’d wanna check out.

In fact, you can now buy the whole trilogy in e-Book for less than $12:

Under the Empyrean Sky: e-Book.

Blightborn: e-Book.

The books are eligible for Amazon Matchbook. Which is to say, if you buy the print book, you are eligible for a deep discount ($0.99, I think) on the e-Book.

Anyway, hope you check it out and spread the word.

Next up: Zeroes.

After that: Aftermath.

P.S. Tonight I’m doing the launch event at 6:00PM at Let’s Play Books in Emmaus, PA. Stop by, say hi. Or, if you’d like to bounce them a message and ask about obtaining a signed book, please do — I believe they can furnish that request. Call them at 610-928-8600 or go to: www.letsplaybooks.com.

P.P.S. Bonus: no racist old Atticus Finch in this book!