The Ether
Alternate History War Epic
Nine books. One promise. A war the world should have seen coming.
CLASSIFIED ARCHIVES // THE ETHER SERIES
The Second World War never happened. Something worse did.
In 1927, something ancient woke beneath the Siberian permafrost. By 1942, the world's governments had spent fifteen years managing the secret — feeding their populations comfortable fictions about Soviet instability and European tensions while they quietly built their defenses and prayed the line would hold. Michael Ashford is eighteen years old when the line breaks. He's on a graduation trip that was supposed to last six months. He comes home with seven orphaned children, salvaged alien technology, and the particular weight of someone who has seen what the world's governments spent fifteen years deciding you didn't need to know. He makes the children a promise on a train. It takes nine books to keep it. The Ether is an alternate history epic spanning a decade of survival, loss, and war — from the fall of Europe to the fight for America to a final assault that will determine whether there's anything left worth saving. It's a story about institutional denial and the people who pay for it, about a family built from wreckage, and about what it means to make a promise when you have no idea what keeping it will cost. Nine books. One promise. A war the world should have seen coming.
The Tactical Archive: The Ether Series
VOLUME I
What He Carried
A graduation trip becomes a fight for survival when Michael Ashford's train is attacked in Siberia and he emerges from the wreckage with seven orphaned children and a promise he has no idea how to keep.
VOLUME II
The Line
Michael brings the children to America and the truth to anyone who will listen — while the Wall that stands between Europe and the Hive slowly stops being enough.
VOLUME III
The Breach
The Wall falls, Europe begins to collapse, and Michael has to choose between the safety of the children he promised to protect and the war he can no longer watch from the sidelines.
VOLUME IV
The Last Stands
With Europe lost and the Hive grinding west, Michael fights a grinding defensive war alongside armies holding territory no one believes can be held.
VOLUME V
The Reckoning
The war arrives on American soil, the government's fifteen years of lies are finally exposed, and Michael faces the cost of a truth the world should have been told a decade ago.
VOLUME VI
First Light
For the first time since Russia, humanity stops losing — but the price of turning the tide is higher than anyone expected.
VOLUME VII
The Push
The counteroffensive begins, the world fights back on every front, and Michael leads operations that will either end the war or prove it cannot be ended.
VOLUME VIII
The Gathering
With the Queen's location finally within reach, the people Michael loves most are gathering for what everyone understands may be the last time.
VOLUME IX
The Last Ether
One hundred and fifty volunteers. One desperate plan. One promise, made on a train in Russia, finally coming due.