So when the universe falls to pieces, it doesn’t mean your life has to, right? That comes later.
Jeane Blake, captain of the spaceship Skylark, makes her living by looting dead worlds, planets fallen prey to naturally occurring wormhole-like rifts plaguing the cosmos. She survives the only way she knows how: avoiding commitment and arguing with her dead foster father’s ghost. But when her crew stumbles upon an alien device that could collapse the wormhole network and wipe out all sentient life, they catch the hungry eyes of the Union, a tyrannical empire hunting the sinister tech.
As she flees the Union’s brainwashed agents, Jeane is forced to take on a shady mission and gets stuck assisting the runaway monarch of a technocrat planet. Queen Maura Tholis is seeking the aid of an interstellar resistance to reclaim her war-torn world, with another trouble-magnet device as her bargaining chip: a glove that allows her to command AI systems. Jeane couldn’t care less about the whole deal, but things become personal when the Union annexes the place she calls home. And it might be her fault.
Reluctant to become weapons in the hands of power-hungry militants and desperate rebels, smuggler and queen join forces. But to save their homes, they must redefine themselves, work with the enemy, and face personal traumas they’d buried long ago—and only stars know which challenge might break them in the end.
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Cover art: Harkalé Linaï
Editor: Charlie Knight
The first two chapters are free on my ko-fi!
Short stories
Strays (free)
Double Trouble (for supporters)
Character art
Jeane, Maura, and Roy by @nightshading on Twitter
Reviews
Skylark is perfect for readers who like chonky books that focus both on character and plot, and who enjoy things like city building, epically sized settings, and political intrigue, but don’t want to be bogged down in them. There are still plenty of action scenes, harrowing personal choices, and inner demons to contend with. This is also an ace-friendly book, since the characters hinge on their platonic affections for each other, and not on an overarching romance or lust. Helyna has a strong voice and an excellent understanding of her characters.
Cat Rector (author of The Goddess of Nothing At All)
Clove has great characterization and motivation for all of her main cast, and the development is both believable and interesting. Skylark in the Fog is a loving, bittersweet tale of a reluctant hero full of twists and turns. If you love Star Wars or Firefly, you’ll enjoy this book.
Azalea Forrest (author of Witch in the Lighthouse and A Bitter Drink)
Holy cow, you guys. This sweeping epic of a tale was a ride from start to finish, with well-crafted characters and the kind of world-building you can feel. Safe to say, I was sat, turning pages as fast as my eyes could read them.
Skylark in the Fog is a beautiful, thrilling epic that pays loving homage to the space opera genre.
Julie March (author of Bridges of Smoke)
If you want a book that gives you a shipload of characters to fall in love with, this is the one. The story feels epic, the world feels lived in, the characters are rich and real; it’s exactly the kind of book you want to read if you’re into space-jaunt escapades as seen in Star Wars, Firefly, or The Expanse.
Kevin Weir (author of Ink For Blood and Endless Hunger)
A wonderful job at creating a world that feels expansive and is highly detailed. There isn’t just one story lurking between the pages of this novel: the characters and places all have life to them, and they could all tell their own stories if given the chance. The love Helyna has for this story shows on every page.
Cheyenne Brammah (author of the All Of Our Sins books)
Whilst the story is familiar in its space operyness and you think you know what’s going to happen, the story takes some surprising twists in the way that certain plot points are dealt with. There’s plenty of action throughout the book and there’s definitely lots of space chases, laser gun fights and starship destroyers.
This is a really good debut.
FantasyBookNerd (book blogger)
Rich and action packed, I really enjoyed reading Skylark in the Fog and I think it’s a great book for any sci-fi reader who loves deep space adventures that are filled with action.
Vesna S. (book blogger)
So detailed and clever, and unbelievably exciting. This book is very big, but absolutely none of it feels like filler. The plot is just so intricate and engaging that everything is important either to the characters or to the universe crashing around them, and you don’t even notice all those pages flying by. This was a phenomenal book, and I enjoyed every minute of it.
Eagle (Goodreads review)
Helyna L. Clove 