Of This and Other Worlds - Science Fiction Reading Group

Now moving towards the end of 2025, we’ll be continuing 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 tenth reading group of 2025, we'll be travelling to a land where the very essence of humanity has become a resource of an expanding empire.

The Catenan Republic – the Hierarchy – may rule the world now, but they do not know everything. Even as they grind weaker nations beneath their heels, both vengeful survivors of their conquests and internal reformists make their own plans to subvert the Republic.

Vis, the adopted son of Magnus Quintus Ulcisor, a prominent senator within the Hierarchy, is trained to enter the famed Catenan Academy to help Ulciscor learn what the hidden agenda is of the remote island academy. Secretly, he also wants Vis to discover what happed to his brother who died at the academy. He’s sure the current Principalis of the academy, Quintus Veridius Julii, a political rival, knows much more than he’s revealing.

As the schemes of the powerful come to fruition, Vis must decide where his loyalties - and ambitions - lie.