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"Long ago, long before Dayblown Phobos was born, before the Ceres Storm and the Whirlwinds, from which time fled to us with hands across its eyes..."

In the far future on a radically transformed Mars, a boy named Daric is swept up in the designs of the fabled Hesiarch, one man who is now many, battling each other while working to reassert their influence on the post-human solar system. First published to acclaim in 2000, Ceres Storm is a science fiction adventure in the pyrotechnic tradition of Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination and Cordwainer Smith's Norstrilia.

David Herter's first novel, Ceres Storm, was recently published to widespread acclaim. "Distinctive and imaginative, Herter's tale moves to its own disconcerting logic: a debut of immense promise," said Kirkus Reviews. Now Herter moves from SF to contemporary fantasy and to a more literary mode of storytelling.

Evening's Empire is set on the Oregon coast, in Evening, a small town famous for its cheeses. Russell Kent, an opera composer from Massachusetts, lost his beloved wife there a year ago to a freak accident, and returns now to confront his ghosts.

Kent has been commissioned to write an opera based upon Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, whose story fills his dreams, and only in Evening does he feel himself able to return to work. There he also discovers many strange things (even beyond the cheese sculptures), finds new love and new friendship, and is initiated into a fantastic secret the whole populace is hiding in a cavern beneath the town.

In some ways reminiscent of the Newford stories of Charles de Lint, this is an ambitious fantasy by an important new talent from the Pacific Northwest.

David Herter creates a modern reimagining Gene Wolfe's Island of Doctor Death. Young Ballou lives alone with his mother in an old house on the shore. When the mysterious Wilson arrives, Ballou's reality tips into a world populated with characters from his pulp comic books as he struggles to understand the adults around him.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.