"Paradise is a loan. The debt collectors are here."

For ten thousand years the Sienoan people have existed as gods. In Sienoa – a city of gleaming crystal – both hunger and death are merely things people once talked about. The ‘Pulse’, providing endless, unsoiled power, means every desire is satisfied before anyone even has it.

But for the architect Kael, and the physicist Elara, the bright light is starting to fail.

When frightening ‘Fades’ go through the power network, Elara finds a truth that breaks the base of their ideal world: Sienoa’s unending life is a leech.

The Pulse doesn’t make power – it takes it from the structure of what’s possible, steadily killing off billions of unborn lives in other universes so Sienoa’s lights stay lit. Their paradise is raised on a pile of corpses from many worlds.

Kael and Elara are now given an impossible option: Be quiet and help with the killing of universes.

Start a revolt that will end their own lives forever.

To rescue all existence, they must pull down the heavens and allow the first thing their race is afraid of: the first sunset for ages.

The First Flicker is the first volume in The Sienoan Paradox: The Price of Eternity – a very involved, serious science fiction series of three books. If you enjoyed the huge scope of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, the difficult science of Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem and the strong, unpleasant dangers of 1984, you’ll really enjoy Shaikat Majumdar’s grand tale.

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