Mage Against the Machine

In this LitRPG adventure, two rivals must level up their skills and uncover dark conspiracies to defeat the High King and find the ritual that will send them home – before it's too late…

They were nobody's idea of heroes.

Shaun is a twenty-three-year-old ex-jock with a mountain of debt, his late mother's clapped-out car, and a talent for making bad decisions fast. Ava is a middle-aged lab tech who gave up her dreams to raise her brother and has been quietly furious about it ever since. They work for the same faceless mega-corporation, they can barely stand each other, and on any normal day their paths would never cross.

This is not a normal day.

When a mysterious alarm pulls them into a secret sub-basement and face-to-face with a door floating three feet off the ground, Shaun does what Shaun always does — acts first and thinks never. One opened door later, they're stranded in a world of ancient magic, mythical creatures and legends made flesh, where humanity has been outlawed on pain of death.

Welcome to the Ring of the World. Try not to die.

Armed with a talking sword, a forbidden mathematics that can rewrite reality, one deeply reluctant octopus and a Fae prince with serious family issues, two people who have absolutely nothing in common are going to have to learn — fast — that survival is a team sport.

Back home, someone just noticed the door is open. And they're sending people through.

The clock is already ticking.

Reviews

Praise for Stewart Hotston:

'As wildly inventive as it is intriguing' RJ Barker, author of The Boneships and Forsaken trilogies

'Breathtaking in scope and concept, pushing the boundaries of the genre' Adrian Tchaikovsky, bestselling author of the Children of Time series

About the author

Stewart started writing in a fit of romance. That was more than a decade ago. He still writes for the love of his life but also for his children, his friends and because he loves it. Having once, long ago, been a proper physicist and now working in finance, he tends to write speculatively – preferring to think about big issues and ordinary people. In other words, he loves the grand old spirit of science fiction, whether it's long or short pieces.