MAYA: Seed Takes Root (Maya #1)

"An exceptional story" - Kirkus Reviews

A living internet lets you visit the dead. The gods who control it can read your thoughts. For readers of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time and Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Billions will compete in the Divya Trials. One will become a god. Yachay’s grandfather has wagered their entire livelihood on him winning.

On the planet Neh, the roots of the Maya trees form a vast, living internet. Every day, people connect to Maya and enter shared dream worlds where they work, play, and even visit their dead.

The immortal god-rulers use this data to predict and shape the future. Everyone is connected. Everyone is tracked. Everyone is controlled.

Everyone except Yachay.

Raised in isolation by his ailing grandfather, the nineteen-year-old has never connected to Maya. He is invisible to the gods of data, and he wants no part of their competition.

But his grandfather’s secrets reveal an ancient resistance and a lifetime of training Yachay never knew he’d received. To enter the Trials is to step into a world he has never known, with everything they have at stake.

And the gods have already predicted the winner.

MAYA: Seed Takes Root, the first novel in the expansive MAYA universe, fuses science fiction, fantasy, and philosophy into an epic of thrilling adventure and urgent allegory. Drawing on South Asian mythology, hard science, and sharp social commentary, it asks the questions that define our time: Who controls our stories? Who profits from our data? And in an age of perfect prediction; is freedom still possible?