Free Ebook Version

A Free Book

To celebrate the 2007 publication of Queen of Candesce, I decided to re-release my first novel as a free eBook. You can download it from this page. Ventus was first published by Tor Books in 2000, and and you can still buy it; to everyone who would just like to sample my work, I hope you enjoy this free version.

I've released this book under a Creative Commons license, which means you can read it and distribute it freely, but not make derivative works or sell it. [A number of people helped with the conversion to different ebook formats:  Mobipocket is included thanks to Dave Marsh, Alex Swavely, Derek Benner, Claus Maier, Ben Henley and Dennis McCunney. The eReader format was supplied by Zachary Brewster-Geisz, although I had to pick among several equally good versions in the end because other people had also been converting to this format. Derek Benner contributed the Sony and FBReader versions.]

About Ventus

Ventus is a novel of information apocalypse set in the far future. For a thousand years the sovereign Winds have maintained the delicate ecological balance of the terraformed planet Ventus. Now an alien force threatens to wrest control of the terraforming system away from the Winds...

Jordan Mason, a young tradesman, is thrust into the midst of an ancient galactic conflict when he becomes the only human on Ventus who can locate the source of the alien threat. But will he side with the Winds, who have brutally suppressed technological development among the human colonists of Ventus? Or will he throw in his lot with an entity that may be planning to remake Ventus in its own, deathly image? Ventus incorporates ideas about nanotechnology, terraforming, and information theory in an epic tale of war, tragic love, betrayal and transcendence.

The Editions

You can read Ventus in the following formats:

• Online
• As a zipped HTML file
• As a PDF
• As a MobiPocket file
• As an MS Reader file
• As an eReader file (thanks to Zachary Brewster-Geisz)
• As a Sony PRS-500 file*
• As an FBReader file*

*Thanks to Derek Benner

The original page on the old site, including errata, can be found here.  Hopefully I'll soon have time to create a proper errata wiki where you can enter typos you've found.

This novel is released under a Creative Commons license. Tor Books still retains world print publication rights.