She is the ultimate weapon. She once served us. Now she's got her own plans.
Once we approached the aliens in peace... and they annihilated us. Now mankind has developed the ultimate killing machine, the Providence class of spaceship.
With the ships' frightening speed, frightening intelligence and frightening weaponry, it's now the salamanders' turn to be annihilated... in their millions.
The mismatched quartet of Talia, Gilly, Jolene and Anders are the crew on one of these destroyers. But with the ship's computers designed to outperform human decision-making in practically all areas, they are virtual bystanders. The Providence will take them to where the enemy are and she will dictate the strategy in any battle.
The crew's only job role is to publicise their glorious war to a sceptical Earth. Social media and video clips are THEIR weapons in an endless charm offensive. THEIR chief enemy is not the space reptiles but each other, and boredom.
But then everything changes. A message comes from base: the Providence is going into the Violet Zone, where there are no beacons and no communications with Earth. It is the heart of the enemy empire - and now the crew are left to wonder whether this is a mission of ultimate destruction or, more sinisterly, of ultimate self-destruction...
Industry Reviews
Praise for Providence * : *
[A] terrific sci-fi thriller * Publishers Weekly *
PROVIDENCE is an absolute treat. Pulls the trick of being both irrepressibly old-school sci-fi and creepily relevant to the data-driven future * Austin Grossman, author of Soon I Will Be Invincible *
An astonishing novel! PROVIDENCE is Philip K. Dick and William Gibson fueled by pure adrenaline (with a bit of Spielberg and Ridley Scott thrown in). The brilliant, unstoppable imagination of Max Barry glows on every page of this action-filled, yet emotionally resonant, tale. It will keep you riveted from first page till last. I read in one sitting and I guarantee you'll do the same * Jeffery Deaver, author of The Never Game *
Action-packed and unsettling, PROVIDENCE is a sleekly-written parable about the absurdity of war--and the deeply human urge to destroy everything we don't understand, whether it comes from a distant planet or right here on Earth * Annalee Newitz, author of Autonomous and The Future of Another Timeline *
Praise for Lexicon:
Imagine, if you will, a secret group of people called Poets who have the power to control others simply by speaking to them. Barry has, and the result is an extraordinary fast, funny, cerebral thriller. * Lev Grossman, Time Magazine *
A dark, dystopic grabber in which words are treated as weapons, and the villainous types have literary figures' names. Plath, Yeats, Eliot and Woolf all figure in this ambitious, linguistics-minded work of futurism. * Janet Maslin, New York Times *
Gripping... a pitch-perfect thriller, a jetpack of a plot that rocketed me from page one to page 400 in a single afternoon. * Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing *
A spellbinding, intelligent read... a freewheeling plot intermeshed with linguistic theory and some genuinely creepy horror set-pieces. * Guardian *
Truly original... a crack-paced thriller... smart and tons of fun * Australian *
I could not put PROVIDENCE down until I'd finished it in one thrilling sitting. This is science fiction at its best-a ship so believably alive and characters so determined, flawed, and compelling that you'll forget you're not also part of the crew * Peng Shepherd, author of The Book of M *
