Partial Function: A Wuxia-inspired Epic Fantasy

by JCM Berne

If Taken starred Michelle Yeoh and was set on a Jurassic Park - inspired Cradle.

Monster hunter Akina Azure inherited the most powerful weapon in the martial world before retiring to a peaceful life raising her twin girls.

The Reaver has them kidnapped, thinking Akina will trade that weapon for their safe return.

Will she? Or will she use it to wreak a terrible retribution on the men who took her girls?

You get one guess.

Shadow of Hyperion

Turn Four of the Hybrid Helix

Rohan once served the Empire. At great cost, he earned his freedom, and has since sought nothing more than to finish his shift in peace and figure out where his love life is going.

Then he receives a message from Earth, calling in a favor. A plea for the kind of help only The Griffin can provide.

Reluctantly, he recalls his mentor. The man who taught him how to live with his cursed Power. A man who had been the galaxy’s greatest hope, before the il’Drach sent him to his death.

What would Hyperion do?

Blood Reunion

Turn Three of the Hybrid Helix

People are dying, their corpses left savaged and drained of blood. The obvious culprit: vampires. But vampires shouldn’t be able to sneak around Wistful undetected or shadowstep freely inside her body. Soon the station herself becomes oddly uncooperative, leaving Rohan and Wei Li bewildered and all her inhabitants in danger.

Finding and defeating the killer will require a deep dive into the ancient history of Wistful and of the il’Drach people. Into the connections between the Ursans, the wormholes, and the races that preceded them. Into the dark past of a tormented space station that yearns only for death.

Rohan will be forced to fight, and maybe even to kill. He’ll have to face those who bear grudges from his past, the Empire he once served, and his own reluctance to again become the warrior he sometimes needs to be.

What they don’t know is that Hyperion is dead.

The Griffin spent ten years fighting wars across the sector as a weapon of mass destruction for the il’Drach Empire. His victories made his name a curse on a dozen worlds and a nightmare on scores more. He retired to the peaceful station Wistful and discovered that leaving his name behind didn’t clear his sins, his debts, or his conscience.

Earth’s peril may give him a chance for redemption, if he can only find a way to stop the monsters without turning into one. Without becoming The Griffin again.

Return of The Griffin

Turn Two of the Hybrid Helix

 
Humanity faces extinction. Ten-kiloton monsters are rising from the depths of the Pacific, levelling entire cities in frenzies of destruction. Earth’s heroes have been decimated. The survivors put their hope in one last, desperate plan: find Hyperion, Earth’s most powerful hero, and ask him to return from exile to save them.

What they don’t know is that Hyperion is dead.

The Griffin spent ten years fighting wars across the sector as a weapon of mass destruction for the il’Drach Empire. His victories made his name a curse on a dozen worlds and a nightmare on scores more. He retired to the peaceful station Wistful and discovered that leaving his name behind didn’t clear his sins, his debts, or his conscience.

Earth’s peril may give him a chance for redemption, if he can only find a way to stop the monsters without turning into one. Without becoming The Griffin again.

Wistful Ascending

Turn one of the Hybrid Helix

The mixed-species children of the il’Drach have awesome, civilization-ending Powers. The il’Drach have built a cruel Empire spanning half a galaxy behind them.

Half-human Rohan, exhausted by a decade fighting for that Empire as a weapon of mass destruction, has paid a secret and terrible price for his freedom. Now retired, he strives to live a quiet life towing starships for the space station Wistful; his most pressing problems are finding the perfect cup of coffee and talking to a beguiling shuttle tech without tripping over his own tongue.

When a nearby, long-dormant wormhole is opened by a shipful of angry refugees, the many eyes of the Empire focus uncomfortably on Wistful. As scientists, spies, and assassins converge, Rohan finds that reverting to the monster the Empire created is the surest way to protect his friends. And, if he’s not careful, the surest way to lose them.