Paul McAuley: Chapter One of The Confluence Trilogy

Last week, Paul wrote us a brilliant guest blog piece to celebrate the publication of The Confluence Trilogy. The omnibus of the classic trilogy is available now, and you can start reading now.

There’s a little more about the trilogy below, and don’t forget to enter the competition below to win some signed copies by midnight tonight. If you entered last week there’s no need to enter again. Good luck!

Confluence – a long, narrow, artificial world, half fertile river valley, half crater-strewn desert. A world beyond the end of human history, served by countless machines, inhabited by ten thousand bloodlines who worship their absent creators, rivem by a vast war against heretics.

This is the home of Yama, found as an infant in a white boat on the world’s Great River, raised by an obscure bureaucrat in an obscure town in the middle of a ruined necropolis, destined to become a clerk – until the discovery of his singular ancestry. For Yama appears to be the last remaining scion of the Builders, closest of all races to the revered architects of Confluence, able to awaken and control the secret machineries of the world.

Pursued by enemies who want to make use of his powers, Yama voyages down the length of the world to search for answers to the mysteries of his origin, and to discover if he is to be the saviour of his world, or its nemesis.