by L.Holland
Thaddeus Treloar has never known sunlight. Born and raised in Plate-Eight, a subterranean city bolted to the Excavator, a colossal machine of unknown origin, endlessly boring through the planet's strata in search of warmth; he has grown up breathing recycled air, navigating rusting corridors, and keeping his head down under the watchful, tyrannical eye of the Gwaskor. But as his beloved Gamma's health begins to fail and the brutality of life on the Excavator becomes impossible to ignore, Thaddeus decides he is done enduring. When he stumbles upon a deposit of Glavian Ore; a rare and extraordinarily valuable material, he sees a way out. With enough leverage, he believes he can barter in the black markets of the city for the freedom of his family and his closest friends; the fiercely independent Lanna and the endlessly inventive Jun. Together, with his loyal hound Shadow at his side, Thaddeus sets the plan in motion. But the Excavator does not give up its secrets willingly. As the group ventures deeper into the city's dangerous underbelly, Thaddeus begins pulling at threads that unravel far more than he bargained for. The mystery of his father's disappearance, long dismissed or deliberately buried, begins to surface, what he uncovers points directly at the Gwaskor themselves. The regime is not simply a brutal administrative force; their origins are tied intimately to the Excavator's own forgotten history, and they will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that history stays buried. The friendship between Thaddeus, Lanna and Jun is tested to its breaking point along the way. Loyalties are questioned, sacrifices are made and the weight of what they are attempting, not just escape, but truth, strains the bonds between them in ways none of them anticipated. Yet even in the Excavator's most oppressive shadows, tenderness survives. Love and humour persist in the most unlikely places, not least through the warmth of those closest to Thaddeus, whose spirit and wit offer moments of light in an otherwise unrelenting darkness. In the final chapters, gain and loss arrive together without warning. A significant figure enters Thaddeus's life just as another is torn from it. Lanna is taken by the Corewarva a powerful player in the cities struggles. A threat whose emergence signals that the dangers of the Excavator are far greater and stranger than the Gwaskor alone. Thaddeus, changed by everything he has endured and learned, sets his course with new resolve: find Lanna, uncover what truly lies on the surface of the planet, and finally ascend the Excavator to freedom.
