Neaia

Shadowvale isn’t your typical small town America. The sun never shines, the gates decide who enters, magic abounds, and every resident bears some kind of curse. Vampire Constantin Thibodeaux was cured of his sun "allergy" when he moved to Shadowvale. Now he runs the local bookstore, which is really just a sideline to filling his own library. Books, unlike people, are far more forgiving of his prickly nature. But he doesn’t care if people don’t like him. He is who he is. And he’s happy. Well, he’s content. Okay, he’s…fine.

They named him Thorn. They told him he was of their people, although he was so different. He was ugly in their eyes, strange, sleek-skinned instead of furred, clawless, different. Yet he was of their power class: judge-warriors, the elite, the fighters, the defenders. Thorn knew that his difference was somehow very important - but not important enough to prevent murderous conspiracies against him, against his protector, against his caste, and perhaps against the peace of the world. But when Thorn finally learned what his true role in life was to be, that the future of two worlds might hinge on him, then he had to stand alone to justify his very existence

The alien race known as the Ancients vanished before Earth's last ice age - but not before building interconnected rings that form a highway system across the galaxy. Humanity has used these rings for years but has never figured out how to build its own, or even how to alter the connection pattern. Now, the Imperial starship Pandora is on a mission to discover and explore new interstellar connection points. While on Venus, an unexpected guest arrives - Marvin, a rogue robot who puts his strange mind to work on reconnecting the rings into a new pattern. Everything goes haywire.