Exodus: The Archimedes Engine

Forty thousand years after humanity fled a dying Earth, the Centauri Cluster is ruled by the Celestials, transhumans who evolved from the people of the first arkships. They hold power through the Crown Dominion and its allied houses. Humans who arrived later, and their descendants, are a subject class with no say over the stars they helped settle.

Finn Jalgori-Tubu has lived his whole life under Dominion rule. When an arkship long thought lost suddenly returns, he sees a chance to become a Traveler and reach for a future outside Celestial control.

The novel follows several other people as well. Thyra is a low-ranked heir fighting to secure her place in Celestial society. Gahji, a Celestial politician, tries to understand events that should not be possible. Terence Wilson-Fletcher, a police detective, is drawn into a case that keeps widening.

This is far-future science fiction told through multiple viewpoints, set in a densely built interstellar society. The three threads converge and resolve the central mysteries, and the book also prepares the ground for the second half of the Archimedes Engine duology, Exodus: The Helium Sea. This is the first volume of that pair.