On the eve of the 20th century, an American Marine on the run from a crime committed during the Spanish-American War seeks refuge at The Astor House in Shanghai. Alone and weary, he tries to settle into the familiar Western surroundings of his hotel room. But a knock on the door by a British agent will lead to a deadly choice that will cast him deep into what will become the Boxer Rebellion of 1899.
Cover illustration by Wayne Haag
WHITE LION RISING
The Great Quake of 2022. "It all ended in that year." Japan destroyed by a series of earthquakes and tsunamis.
"Then the Great Quake of 2025 threw the whole of the Pacific Coast of the United States into the sea." Crippled by the Great Recession, strained by the heavy burden of an ever-expanding national deficit, the land of the free would soon cease to exist.
The People's Republic of China rose to primacy during the 2030s - the decade that the European Union dissolved as rising nationalism, populism, and xenophobia ripped the political and economic fabric of the confederation apart - leaving the continent to fall dangerously into another Dark Age.
This is the forbidding world maverick MotoGP rider Lleónart Blanc was born into. Sponsored by his corporate patron Takagawasan, the White Lion will deliver the first Grand Prix World Championship to the Federation of Catalan City-States in 2056. A victory meant to ignite an insurgence against the autocratic order of the Federation of North African States.
But all does not go according to plan ...