Blight (The Sleep of Reason)

What use is a revolution in a world ruled by magic?

A young wizard on the brink of burnout searches for her lost mentor. A bereaved mother, summoned to the sea by an ancient god, risks all to avenge her child. Her ex-husband smuggles weapons to a rag-tag resistance.

The Cascade ruined the world that was; the Blight nearly destroyed what remained. The magical catastrophe unleashed demons and shriekgrass, an endless winter, and a promise of worse to come.

In what remains of Canada, the genocidal Dominion government rules with an iron fist, while the libertarian Silicon Valley Autonomous Region chips away at the country's sinking west coast.

Can a restive coalition of revolutionaries, defectors, and magicians pick up the pieces?

Advance praise for Blight

"Rachel A. Rosen is a superb prose stylist and an incisive social commentator. Her post-apocalyptic Canada will haunt you forever. Predicting the future is supposed to be science fiction's job, but Rosen shows that urban (and rural!) fantasy can do it, too, with sharp-edged commentary and real-world relevance. Look for this one on the award ballots." - Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of The Downloaded

"A compulsive read: angry, articulate, and lyrical. Somehow, even its horrific fantasy elements only add to the sense that Blight presages tomorrow's headlines (or it would, if those headlines were written by poets and the newspapers themselves weren't all owned by billionaires). Rosen is rapidly proving herself to be the twenty-first century's answer to John Brunner. In fact, this whole trilogy is shaping up to be a minor masterpiece." - Peter Watts, author of Blindsight

"Suffused with masterful horror and black humour and compassion for its beleaguered and all-too-human characters, this spellbinding chronicle of leviathanic magic, political intrigue, and righteous insurrection hurls a molotov cocktail at the evil lurking in humanity's banal appetites for control." - Dale Stromberg, author of Maej

"The second book in the series is even better than the first ... Deftly showing that collective action, not individual heroism, is the only way to fight fascism, Blight is a book I know I'll be coming back to. Rosen is a daring voice in Canadian SFF, and she'll break your heart while making you laugh." - Michelle Browne, author of Meaning Wars

"Rosen's ability to create such a beautifully vivid picture of a vicious world as it slowly chokes to death is simply breathtaking." - Rohan O'Duill, author of Cold Blooded

​"Dotted with laugh-out-loud gallows humour, Blight is supernatural horror with a distressingly prescient narrative. Its disparate (and desperate) cast of resistors, revolutionaries, and reluctant heroes are pitted against a particularly Canadian fascism which is all too believable, even as it comes to power through a response to the resurgence of magic in the world. Fast-paced and populated with characters to fall in love and hate with, Blight is a compelling, entertaining, timely, and thoughtful read." - M. Darusha Wehm, author of Hamlet, Prince of Robots

​"Blight isn't the piece of escapism to distract from what is going on right now. It is raw, stained with grief, full of broken bones and buildings, but it is a book to remind us that we have to keep pushing, because what else is there? Maya says: "This isn't the kind of fight we win-it's the fight we fight." Did we ever think the self-proclaimed Princes would give it all up without a fight? No matter how dark it gets, Blight is full of tenacious, acerbic hope." - Ryszard Merey, author of Read and Then Burn This