Susan Kaye Quinn

When You Had Power Susan Kaye Quinn

For better, for worse. In sickness and in health. Its a legal vow of care for families in 2050, a world beset by waves of climate-driven plagues. Power engineer Lucía Ramirez long ago lost her family to one--shed give anything to take that vow. The Power Islands give humanity a fighting chance, but tending kelp farms and solar lilies is a lonely job. The housing AI found her a family match, saying she should fit right in with the Senegalese retraining expert whos a force of nature, the ex-Pandemic Corps cook with his own cozy channel, and even the writer who insists everything is stories, all the way down. This family of literal and metaphorical refugees could be the shelter shes seeking from her own personal storm. She needs this one to work. Then an unscheduled power outage and a missing turtle-bot crack open a mystery. Something isnt right on Power Island One, but every step she takes to solve it, someone else gets there first--and theyre determined to make her unsee what shes seen. Lucía is an engineer, not a detective, but fixing this problem might cost her the one thing she truly needs: a home. When You Had Power is the first of four tightly-connected novels in a new hopepunk series. Its about our future, how society will shift and flex like a solar lily in the storms of our own making, and how breaks in the social fabric have to be expected, tended to, and healed. Because were in this together, now more than ever before.