Qalea Drop

Back to Table of Contents Qalea Drop is the seventh book in the Spiral Wars series. Published November 2020, it’s available in ebook and paper format. Narrator John Lee performed the audiobook, also available.

Setting
Qalea (pronounced kuh- lay' - uh) Qalea is an ancient city on the planet Eshir in the immense Reeh Empire, in Keijir System. The planet has one moon. The decaying city is built upon layers of the ancient past, and includes newer buildings atop buried temples, steep cliffs, fighting pits, and deep steel canyons. Qalea has become a dumping station for various sentient species, taken and discarded by the reeh. The reeh largely ignore the city, and each faction enforces their own laws. Varied species live in quartered Qalea, including tanifex, lestis, trento, dogreth, qwailash, etc... This is the site of the Amakti Los secret society and was once the home of the ceephay queen (see Machine-race). Qalean Underworld: home to various kauda, genetic freaks and escapees, guarded by the UnderWatch. (QD chapters 9 and 10)

Excerpt: Ancient city of Qalea:

"“Qalea. . .extraordinary, an assault on the eyes and senses, the jumbled old city built upon a decaying and far older city, simultaneously a polluted, broken-down ruin and a spectacular, thriving metropolis. The traffic lanes up here were utterly unregulated, vehicles of all shapes and sizes mixing without concern, holding to streams in similar directions and speeds more by established habit than any enforceable rule.” (QD-9)"

Synopsis
from Amazon

The UFS Phoenix embarks on a dangerous quest for the AI Ceephay Queen who rules at the heart of the Reeh Empire. For cover, Phoenix will use the enormous war being launched by the new rulers of the croma, Croma'Dokran, into reeh space. This war is intended in part to evacuate the corbi homeworld of Rando, thus righting a great wrong of croma history by rescuing two hundred million corbi from reeh tyranny.

While Lisbeth defies her parren seniors to use drysine and parren firepower in assisting the evacuation, Erik captains Phoenix, accompanied by Styx's four drysine warships, to the world of Eshir, where Styx insists the Ceephay Queen was once located. There, in the ancient, ruined city of Qalea, Trace and Styx must lead an away mission through buried layers of Reeh Empire history to uncover its long-forgotten secrets. Discovering the Ceephay Queen's present location could set them on the road to saving humanity. But Qalea's secrets have been hidden by the reeh for millennia, secrets that could rock their Empire, and they will stop at nothing to keep hidden.

New character: A key character in this book is Taj (spoiler link)



The Books

 * 1) Renegade, The Spiral Wars, book 1
 * 2) Drysine Legacy, The Spiral Wars, book 2
 * 3) Kantovan Vault, The Spiral Wars, book 3
 * 4) Defiance, The Spiral Wars, book 4
 * 5) Croma Venture, The Spiral Wars, book 5
 * 6) Rando Splicer, The Spiral Wars, book 6
 * 7) Qalea Drop, The Spiral Wars, book 7
 * 8) more to come