“This is Khaw at their most raw and unrestrained. Prepare for a wild ride.”
“The drearily everyday is infused with . . . dread in a marvelously horrifying, tightly built novella that spins a satisfying tale while doing honor to both of its core sources.”
September 7, 2021 / 288 pages / $25.95
2022 Locus Award Finalist for First Novel
Maya has died and been resurrected into countless cyborg bodies through the years of a long, dangerous career with the infamous Dirty Dozen, the most storied crew of criminals in the galaxy, at least before their untimely and gruesome demise.
Decades later, she and her diverse team of broken, diminished outlaws must get back together to solve the mystery of their last, disastrous mission and to rescue a missing and much-changed comrade . . . but they’re not the only ones in pursuit of the secret at the heart of the planet Dimmuborgir.
The highly evolved AI of the galaxy have their own agenda and will do whatever it takes to keep humanity from ever regaining control. As Maya and her comrades spiral closer to uncovering the AIs’ vast conspiracy, this band of violent women—half-clone and half-machine—must battle their own traumas and a universe of sapient ageships who want them dead, in order to settle their affairs once and for all.
Welcome to The All-Consuming World, the debut novel of acclaimed writer Cassandra Khaw. With this explosive and introspective exploration of humans and machines, life and death, Khaw takes their rightful place next to such science fiction luminaries as Ann Leckie, Ursula Le Guin, and Kameron Hurley.
Cassandra Khaw is an award-winning game writer whose fiction has been nominated for the Locus and British Fantasy Awards. Their short stories can be found in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Uncanny Magazine, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Praise for The All-Consuming World
“Khaw’s first full-length novel is a sensory deluge of language and action that will sweep readers away in a flood of joyful, violent abandon.” —Library Journal ★
“Khaw delivers a gore-drenched, sci-fi take on Ocean’s Eleven set in a Gibsonesque cyberverse . . . Khaw employs densely poetic prose to capture betrayal, rage, injury, and death . . . the fury and lyricism make for an adventure that doubles as a cathartic scream.” —Publishers Weekly
“The All-Consuming World carries Khaw into a new universe, one without limits or horizons—and they're quick to smash everything in sight, doing as much damage as they can to the reader's preconceptions about what cyberpunk, post-humanism, galactic expansion, and relationships should look like. This book is a knife to the ribs: sharp, brutal, and absolutely designed to do exactly what it's doing. Brilliantly written and paced, I don't think there's another author working right now who could have pulled this off. Very worth your time.” —Seanan McGuire, award-winning author of Every Heart a Doorway and Middlegame
"What a @#*% ride! Cassandra Khaw has written an utterly bold and bombastic sci-fi novel—complete with sentient warships, conniving AI, and quite possibly the most dangerous and violent foul-mouthed lady cyborg mercenaries in the known universe! And I am absolutely here for all of it! Khaw has built a world as scarily beautiful and complex as their expansive imagination. Be warned though: once this book gets a hold of you, it won’t let go until the mind-bending, explosive end!" —P. Djéli Clark, award-winning author of Ring Shout and A Master of Djinn
“Profane and gorgeous, The All-Consuming World is the angry queer space opera you've been waiting for. Khaw's style is as ferocious as their characters, and I love the rusty intimacy of the world they’ve built around the interconnected fates of flesh and machines.” —Annalee Newitz, Hugo and Lambda Award-winning author of Autonomous, Future of Another Timeline, and Four Lost Cities
“Cassandra Khaw wields words like a butcher’s knife—with expert grace and blunt violence. The All-Consuming World is a lean story of traumatized near-immortal ex-mercenaries, ancient AI warships, and mind-bending biotech. It’s relentless, profane, and weird—and I mean that in a good way.” —Fonda Lee, award-winning author of the Green Bone Saga
“Reminds me of the first time I read Snow Crash — The All-Consuming World has that frenetic, urgent energy that doesn’t so much compel you to read further as it grabs you by the chin and drags you across the pages. Khaw has written a surly, sneering, zero-g, sharp-toothed poem of vulgarity and violence, and I am here for every electric word of it." —Chuck Wendig, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Wanderers
“Cassandra Khaw's explosive, evocative prose is a treat to read . . . Prepare to take a long leap into the gory, the weird, and the fantastic.” —Kameron Hurley on Hammers on Bone