In The Age of Ra, the ancient Egyptian gods have defeated all the other pantheons and claimed dominion over the Earth. The world is divided into warring factions, each under the aegis of a different deity. Lt. David Westwynter, a British soldier, stumbles into Freegypt, the only place on the planet to have remained independent of the gods’ influence. There, he encounters the followers of a humanist leader known as the Lightbringer, who has vowed to rid mankind of the shackles of divine oppression. David and the Lightbringer have a personal connection. And there is far more to this freedom fighter than it seems, even as he drags the world towards one final, apocalyptic battle.

The Age of Ra is a powerful science fiction novel exploring themes of freedom, oppression, war and love, and a desperate fight for control of the Earth. Solaris will publish it in 2009, in both the UK and US.

Solaris Consultant Editor George Mann said of the deal: “James is one of the most original science fiction writers working in the field today, and The Age of Ra will prove to be a landmark work for the genre. I can’t wait to take James’s work to the US, where a whole new readership awaits him. And who could resist scarab tanks, ray-gun staffs and legions of the animated dead marching across the planet at the will of the Egyptian gods!”

James Lovegrove published his first novel at the age of 24 and has since written more than twenty books, including The Hope, Escardy Gap (co-written with Peter Crowther), Days, The Foreigners, How The Other Half Lives, Untied Kingdom, Imagined Slights, Worldstorm, Gig and Provender Gleed. His short fiction has appeared in magazines as diverse as Interzone and Nature and in numerous anthologies. He has also written extensively for reluctant readers. He has also produced a sequence of teen fantasy novels, the Clouded World, under the pseudonym Jay Amory. He is a regular reviewer of fiction for the Financial Times and lives in Eastbourne on the south coast of England, with his wife Lou, sons Monty and Theo, and cat Ozzy.

Praise for James Lovegrove:

“A balls out SF adventure, set in a parallel England with murder, chases and comedy detectives. This is ridiculously exciting stuff. Fast paced and amazingly realized.”
— Dreamwatch on Provender Gleed

“James Lovegrove’s world building is superb. He succeeds not only in bringing to life an improbable world in which nearly everyone is endowed with a supernormal power, but in convincingly imagining how differently such a world would work.”
— SFSite on Worldstorm

“[one] of the hottest UK writers to emerge in recent years… Lovegrove’s impeccable prose and vivid imagination puts him at the forefront of British SF.”
— Michael Rowley, Waterstone’s Books Quarterly on Worldstorm

About Solaris
BL Publishing, a division of Games Workshop Group PLC has been publishing SF and Fantasy under its Black Library imprint for over ten years. Solaris was founded in February 2007 with the aim of publishing original genre fiction for the US and UK mass markets. In its first year Solaris gained praise from many critics, especially for its back to basics approach. Solaris continues to attract high profile authors to its stable. For more information visit www.solarisbooks.com

For more information contact Caroline Law at caroline.law@games-workshop.co.uk or +44 (0) 115 916 8161