Unity

"Unity is an astonishing debut, twisty and startling, demonstrating both the disciplined development of a long-gestated project and the raw, dynamic flashes of an author's early work. It shows intense interest in the distance between conversation and communion . . . an absorbing, thrilling ride." --New York Times

"A vivid, fascinating, and utterly believable future world . . . Echoes of Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon or the Netflix series Sense8." --New York Journal of Books

Danae is not only herself. She is concealing a connection to a grieving collective inside of her body. But while she labors as a tech servant in the dangerous underwater enclave of Bloom City, her fractured self cannot mend. In a desperate escape, Danae and her lover Naoto hire the enigmatic ex-mercenary Alexei to guide them out of the imploding city.

But for Danae to reunify, the three new fugitives will have to flee across the otherworldly beauty of the postapocalyptic Southwest. Meanwhile, Danae's warlord enemy, the Duke, and a strange new foe, the Borrower, already seek them at any price.

Evoking the gritty cyberpunk of Mad Max and the fluid idealism of Sense8, Unity is a spectacular new re-envisioning of humanity. Breakout author Elly Bangs has created an expressive, philosophical, science-fiction thriller that expands upon consciousness itself.


Genre: Science Fiction

"Unity is a wild firefight of a novel. But amidst the vivid dystopian worldbuilding--the undersea metropolises and scorched badlands--and all the breakneck action is something deeper, a philosophically and emotionally resonant exploration of what it means to carry multiplicities of ourselves, our myriad shades of being. Elly Bangs is a writer of both kaleidoscopic imagination and deep literary empathy, a cyberpunk star in the making." - Omar El Akkad

"Unity is a killer debut by a thrilling new writer. Trust me, you're all going to be hearing a lot about Elly Bangs and this gleaming and gritty world she's created. And cyberpunk fans? Put down the game controller and read this now. This is the real stuff." - Daryl Gregory

"Unity manages to be simultaneously exciting and philosophical, a brilliant gut-punch of a novel. I cannot wait to see what Elly Bangs does next." - Kij Johnson

"Epic science fiction, and intimately personal at the same time, thanks to the clever and revolutionary trick of disassembling the individual subject. Take THAT, the very form of the novel!" - Nick Mamatas

"Breakneck pacing, non-stop action, and delightfully-damaged characters combine with some of the most intricate and clever worldbuilding I've seen in ages to make this an incredibly memorable debut." - Sam J Miller

"Imagine Neuromancer and Lilith's Brood conceived a baby while listening to My Chemical Romance and then that baby was adopted by Ghost in the Shell and Blue Submarine no. 6. The baby's name is Unity." - Meredith Russo