The Minds Between Stars

In 2488, humanity survives within nineteen scattered star systems caught between three ancient alien civilizations locked in a war no one remembers beginning.

Elias Mercer commands the Lantern, a human rescue vessel built to enter disasters after better ships have fled. During the evacuation of a colony orbiting Damaris, Elias disobeys orders to answer a distress call from a crippled Zyloth diplomatic ship. He reaches its lone survivor too late to save him-but not too late for the dying alien to place something inside Elias's mind.

Memories that are not his begin bleeding into his life. He dreams of an alien childhood, understands languages he has never learned, and senses hidden connections between the Zyloth, the mathematically ordered Veyran, and the communal K'thar.

At Orison Station, Elias is reunited with his estranged wife, Dr. Lena Mercer, a neural scientist whose experimental human consciousness network-the Choir-keeps their injured daughter Mira alive. Elias has never accepted that the young woman living through the Choir is still the daughter he remembers. Now, with another consciousness growing inside him, he is forced to confront the very transformation he feared in Mira.

When Orison is attacked, Elias escapes with Lena and representatives of all three alien civilizations. Hunted across the Fractured Reach, the unlikely crew follows traces of an ancient structure called the Meridian, believed capable of ending the war permanently.

But the Meridian was not designed merely to connect minds.

It was designed to make them one.

As fleets gather around a dying star and the Meridian begins reaching toward every compatible consciousness, Elias must decide whether peace is worth achieving if no one is permitted to remain an individual.

The Minds Between Stars is a sweeping science-fiction novel of alien civilizations, interstellar war, family, identity, and the dangerous difference between understanding another person and possessing them.