Gollancz has acquired a three-book fantasy series by Stephen Hunt.  The first novel is titled In Dark Service, while the trilogy is called The Far-Called.  The first volume will be published in 2013.

Stephen is the author of six fantasy novels published by HarperCollins Voyager in the UK and Tor in the US, as well as in various translation editions, and runs the SF Crowsnest news and reviews site.

Here is Stephen’s introduction to the world on which this series takes place:

“Plenas has two unique characteristics worth noting, the first – and most significant of which – is that it’s a world on a mind-boggling scale where peddler caravans can take a thousand years to complete a limited circuit of their trade territory, a land where the guild of radio signallers can relay messages between their stations for multiple lifetimes and still never make a clean circumnavigation of the globe.

It is a world where, should a youngster be gripped by wanderlust, they can simply head off and travel with merchant nomads for their entire lifetime, taking in thousands of exotic nations, strange races and mysterious wonders, while still only travelling across a minute fraction of the globe.

The second distinctive facet of Plenas is that the land has no mineral resources worth mining except around the stratovolcanoes dotted across the world, massive shield volcanoes that stand about three times the elevation of Mount Everest above sea level. These vomit out great gobs of ore-bearing rocks into the air for harvesting by sky mines, and this wealth is always jealously hoarded by the empires that rise to pre-eminence around the stratovolcanoes, growing rich with their monopoly over metals, crystals and coals.

Reliance on sustainable resources means that most societies, races and nations on Plenas are throttled somewhere between a Roman and Victorian level of progress, with only the great empires of the stratovolcanoes reaching a higher level of development.”

The deal for World Rights was brokered by the John Jarrold Literary Agency.

Author Stephen Hunt has made the first novel of his two-book Six Against The Stars science fiction series free for readers to download on the Amazon Kindle. The free download offer is running from now until the end of Sunday 8 January 2012.

Here’s the book information …

“As the self-proclaimed biggest coward in the galaxy, Horatio has it easy on what passes for 40th century America. A much-favoured sycophant in the court of the King of Earth, Horatio lives in a genetically engineered paradise where there’s a vat-grown slave waiting around every marble column with a bunch of grapes to drop into his oh-so perfectly designed mouth.

Unfortunately for Horatio, the artificial intelligence that rules the great mass of humanity spread across the stars has other plans for this feckless seducer. So, if you ever wonder how the galaxy’s biggest coward finds himself actually trying to save it, you’re not alone… but then, unfortunately, neither is our hero!

His misadventures are abetted by a psychotic Martian warrior, a robot who thinks it’s related to Sherlock Holmes, a beautiful genetically enhanced assassin, a scientist with a computer for a brain, and a millennia-old clone who was alive when the last US President was executed by a firing squad.

It’s six against the galaxy. Six against the stars. They’ll save the universe… but they might damage it first.”

Download free from HERE in the UK and HERE in the US