In his training as a spy, Ro was warned: You will always be living a lie. Jumping into a Star Eater's mind in the first place requires a moment of perfect psychic connection, and he has studied all his life to comprehend their species. The only species physiologically capable of mining the element needed for lightyear-spanning space travel. The species Ro's own small civilization, with its dwindling resources and withering reach, needs to know more about. It will feel real, his elders impressed upon him. It will never be real. But Ro's certainty runs deep: he will be different. Ro will not be an imposter hiding the truth of his past, because his heart will be one of them. He will be one of them. To understand is to become. It never occurs to him that the mere act of understanding can destroy.

Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job. Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully built life away. Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice --- for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers and cutthroats.

Rosa, also known as Red Riding Hood, is done with wolves and woods. Hou Yi the Archer is tired and knows she is past her prime. Both would rather just be retired, but that’s not what the world has ready for them. When deadly sunbirds begin to ravage the countryside, threatening everything they’ve both grown to love, the two must join forces. Now blessed and burdened with the hindsight of middle age, they begin a quest that’s a reckoning of sacrifices made and mistakes mourned, of choices and family and the quest for immortality.

Math-genius mercenary Cas Russell has stopped a shadow organization from brainwashing the world, and discovered that her past was deliberately erased and her superhuman abilities deliberately created. And that's just the start. When a demolitions expert targets Cas and her friends, and the hidden conspiracy behind Cas' past starts to reappear, the past, present and future collide in a race to save one of her dearest friends.

Math-genius mercenary Cas Russell has decided to Fight Crime. After all, with her extraordinary mathematical ability, she can neuter bombs or out-shoot an army. And the recent outbreak of violence in the world’s cities is Cas’ fault --- she’s the one who crushed the organization of telepaths keeping the world’s worst offenders under control. But Cas’ own power also has a history, one she can’t remember --- or control. One that's creeping into her mind and fracturing her sanity...just when she’s gotten herself on the hit list of every crime lord on the West Coast. And her best, only, sociopathic friend. Cas won’t be able to save the world. She might not even be able to save herself.

Cas Russell is good at math. Scary good. The vector calculus blazing through her head lets her smash through armed men twice her size and dodge every bullet in a gunfight, and she'll take any job for the right price. As far as Cas knows, she’s the only person around with a superpower...until she discovers someone with a power even more dangerous than her own. Someone who can reach directly into people’s minds and twist their brains into Möbius strips. Someone intent on becoming the world’s puppet master. Cas should run, like she usually does, but for once she's involved. There’s only one problem: she doesn’t know which of her thoughts are her own anymore.