With the 2021 release of Leviathan Falls, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck—the collaborative duo behind the pen name James S.A. Corey—brought a definitive close to a monumental chapter of their careers. For a full decade, they poured their creative energy into The Expanse, a sprawling science-fiction saga spanning nine novels, a collection of novellas, and a successful television adaptation that bridged the gap between Syfy and Amazon. Aside from a 2014 foray into the Star Wars universe with Honor Among Thieves, their professional lives were tethered to that singular, expansive universe. Branching out into an entirely fresh setting and narrative was surely a daunting prospect.
Yet, there is no hesitation to be found in the Captive’s War trilogy, which launched with the 2024 bestseller The Mercy of Gods and continues with this month’s release, The Faith of Beasts. (Unsurprisingly, the series is already in development for an Amazon adaptation.) Abraham and Franck plunge the reader headlong into a brutal alien-invasion arc where humanity is hopelessly outmatched. The Carryx, a ruthless interstellar empire that catalogs, enslaves, or eradicates lesser species, swiftly claims the human world of Anjiin, indiscriminately wiping out an eighth of its population simply to assert their dominance.
Image: OrbitThe story follows a cadre of researchers—Dafyd Alkhor, Tonner Freis, Jessyn Kaul, and others—who are whisked away to a colossal, cathedral-like “world-palace” populated by various alien captives. Their mandate is clear: continue their scientific endeavors for the Carryx or face the total annihilation of the human race. In this context, the title The Mercy of Gods takes on a chillingly ironic weight, underscoring the absolute powerlessness of their position.
Where the first novel detailed the fall of Anjiin and the struggle for survival, The Faith of Beasts—arriving April 14—takes the stakes even higher. Read on for the gripping opening chapter.
Note: The following chapter contains major spoilers for the events of The Mercy of Gods. If you are new to the series, we highly recommend starting with the first book.
Image: Orbit BooksAnjiin had once been home to four and a half billion souls. Of those, the Carryx had abducted fewer than four thousand to toil within their world-palace.
Roughly one in seven perished during the transit or shortly after arrival due to trauma or illness. Once humanity demonstrated its utility, the scattered groups—reunited like survivors of a shipwreck—were brought together, with the exception of five hundred individuals requisitioned for tasks only the Carryx comprehended. Their new quarters, a dedicated sector within the hive, were both more accommodating and deeply alien. The Carryx had slowly learned the nuances of human existence: showers no longer necessitated guesswork, and the intimate indignities of hygiene were at least acknowledged, if not perfectly solved.
In exchange, the architecture had shifted; passageways grew broader, walls tilted at uncomfortable angles, and the air thickened with a resinous, saline musk. It was a smell that soon faded into the background, noticed only when one returned from the alien-filled common areas or the quiet, thin-aired gardens that offered a view of the staggering, ziggurat-filled horizon. The garden itself was a modest patch of artificial luxury—a purple-barked tree, a bed of mint, and a black-metal fountain—that felt like an impossible indulgence.
As Dafyd pressed his thumbs into his weary eyelids to stave off a persistent headache, his colleague Jellit approached. “Another summons from our master?” Jellit asked.
“Ekur has requests,” Dafyd replied, rising to his feet. “More changes to our responsibilities, I suspect. Any news from the visualization lab?”
Jellit hesitated, then shook his head, keeping the details to himself. Dafyd descended toward the moiety, accompanied by his Sinen overseer. Many of his peers—Campar, Rickar, Jessyn—had vanished into the depths of the palace on mysterious missions. Others, like Nöl and Synnia, were long dead. He was left with Tonner, who harbored a deep resentment, and Jellit, an former adversary turned reluctant accomplice. To the rest of the captive humans, Dafyd had become a necessary fiction: a priest interceding between their doomed race and their captors.
Back in his room, Dafyd surveyed the clutter of his life—lists of names and needs that defined their current existence. A report he desperately needed was missing. He looked toward his overseer. “I need to stop by the labs. Tonner hasn’t delivered the update.”
The Sinen’s chest-mounted translator emitted a wet, impassive sound. “If you do, you do.” It wasn’t permission so much as a cold, encroaching threat.
The new lab equipment was a baffling, exotic mosaic of a thousand civilizations—spectrometers and assay machines that looked like relics from a celestial tide pool. Tonner’s new assistant, a man named Brun, stood over a segmented, table-sized device, grinning. “It’s a static centrifuge,” he explained, clearly impressed. “It generates G-force without a single spin.”
Dafyd pushed past the distraction. “Where’s Tonner?”
“In the legacy labs,” Brun replied.
Finding Tonner amid the unfamiliar machinery, the weariness of the last few years was stark on his face. “The new tech is a bottleneck,” Tonner grumbled, his broken arm still in a splint. “We’re losing time trying to decode ‘pretty toys’ instead of doing actual work. I had a team, Dafyd. I had people.”
“I know,” Dafyd said, sensing the Sinen’s presence nearby. “But we have no choice.”
When Dafyd finally arrived at the office of the keeper-librarian, Ekur-Tkalal, the alien was engaged in its own inscrutable tasks. Its feeding arms manipulated streams of light with practiced, deadly precision. It finally addressed him, its voice a jarring mix of birdsong and a flat, human translation. “Your work on nutritional synthesis and gravimetric lensing is acceptable. Discontinue all other research. Reorganize your moiety to focus exclusively on these pursuits.”
“I understand,” Dafyd said.
“You will also stop using these primitive scratchings,” the Carryx continued. “Submit your reports in the archival format. Your moiety has caught the eye of the Sovran. You are to prepare for wider deployment across thousands of worlds.”
“There are only three thousand of us,” Dafyd noted.
The creature’s four eyes tracked him. “Then you will breed to meet the quota. A moiety that cannot sustain its own population is useless and will be culled.”
Dafyd felt the air vanish from his lungs. “Our young… they require years of education and care.”
“The Sovran’s will encompasses eons,” Ekur-Tkalal replied. “Begin now.”
Dafyd nodded, the weight of the order crushing down on him. There was no room for debate, only the cold, hard necessity of survival. He had to find a way, or they would all die.
The Faith of Beasts is available now from Amazon, the Orbit Books website, Bookshop.org, and other major retailers.
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Source: Polygon
