The Rise of Ransom City

As a child, Harry Ransom was healed from a usually fatal illness by a mysterious light-emitting apparatus, setting him on a quest to replicate it through a means he calls the Ransom Process, which is “more fundamental than electricity.” During the course of bankrolling his research and the utopian Ransom City, he runs afoul of agents of the forces of Industry and Chaos, who are battling for dominance of a newly colonized continent. His technological success also sparks hope—and consternation—that he’s found a way to end the constant warfare, particularly out on the Western Rim, where nature’s laws become unpredictable and wild. This sequel to The Half-Made World stands well alone; written like an old-fashioned memoir, it seamlessly blends whimsy with deadly seriousness. Ransom himself comes across as an eccentric, and readers will share his hope that human inventiveness might win out over the soul-grinding war. Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. (Dec.)