Of This and Other Worlds - Science Fiction Reading Group

Continuing into 2025, we’ll be carrying on our Fantasy and Science Fiction reading group, exploring worlds both fantastical and horrific, monstrous and utopian. Whether your interests lie in exploring the ruins of a lost civilization, challenging fiends to save the world from ruin or delicately navigating the politics of a corporate interstellar McEmpire™ (Ask about our franchising options and get a free McNuke™!), I do hope you’ll join us.

For the fifth reading group of 2025, we're heading to a shattered world, where humanity has taken refuge from a terrible cataclysm upon floating islands called arks.

Ophelia lives on Anima, an ark where objects have souls. Beneath her worn scarf and thick glasses, the young girl hides the ability to communicate with the souls of objects, and the power to travel through mirrors.

Her peaceful existence on the Ark of Anima is disrupted when she is promised in marriage to Thorn, from the powerful Dragon clan. Ophelia must leave her family and follow her fiancée to the floating capital on the distant Ark of the Pole.

There, in the presence of her enigmatic future husband, Ophelia slowly realises that she is a pawn in a political game that will have far-reaching ramifications not only for her but for her entire world.