Karin Lowachee’s ancestors emigrated from China to South America. She was born in Guyana but grew up in Canada. Lowachee worked as a creative writing instructor and an adult education teacher. Her first novel, Warchild, was issued by Warner Aspect in 2002. It won the Warner Aspect First Novel Award. Lowachee soon published Burndive (2003) and Cagebird. All of these “space opera” novels have been reissued independently in definitive editions with new cover art.
Fiction
Burndive
Synopsis (From the 2019 edition)
Ryan Azarcon is the only son of an infamous spacecarrier captain, the grandson of a Joint Chief Admiral, and the “Hot #1 Bachelor” of his home station—he lives under scrutiny. After witnessing a terrorist attack, his grief-stricken face becomes his identity to the outside world. A year later he is still plagued by nightmares of bloody destruction that make him desperate to escape everything. When his estranged military father takes controversial action in a long, drawn-out interstellar conflict, Ryan becomes the target for assassins. Forced to confront the violence and his own memories, he begins to question everything he thought he knew about the war and his father. Maybe the enemy is not who he thinks it is and he is not the only one in his family with a devastating secret.
Fiction
Cagebird
Synopsis (From the 2021 edition)
Four-year-old Yuri Terisov watched his home colony destroyed by aliens. By six he’d succumbed to the idea that what was left of his family was never going to leave the desolate refugee camp. Then a captain named Marcus arrived at the camp and offered to take Yuri on his merchant ship to work. But Yuri did not know that Marcus was actually a disgraced military captain turned pirate and he intended to train Yuri as his protégé. After more than a decade of manipulation and intimidation, Yuri is a pirate in his own right: a killer, arms dealer, and spy—now imprisoned and hunted by his former comrades. When a government Black Ops agent offers him a chance to break free, reluctantly he agrees—but the deal isn’t what it appears to be. Soon Yuri finds himself back in the midst of ruthless agendas that test the years of his training and threaten his survival with a dangerous proposition: an act of trust.
Fiction
A Covenant of Ice
Series: The Crowns of Ishia ; bk. 3
Oxford: Solaris, 2025.
forthcoming July 2025
Fiction
The Desert Talon
Series: The Crowns of Ishia ; bk. 2
Oxford: Solaris, 2025.
Fiction
The Gaslight Dogs
Orbit, 2010.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
At the edge of the known world, an ancient nomadic tribe faces a new enemy-an Empire fueled by technology and war. A young spiritwalker of the Aniw and a captain in the Ciracusan army find themselves unexpectedly thrown together. The Aniw girl, taken prisoner from her people, must teach the reluctant soldier a forbidden talent…
Fiction
The Mountain Crown
Series: The Crowns of Ishia ; bk. 1
Oxford: Solaris, 2024.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
War between the island states of Kattaka and Mazemoor has left no one unscathed. Méka’s nomadic people, the Ba’Suon, were driven from their homeland by the Kattakans. Those who remained were forced to live under the Kattakan yoke, to serve their greed for gold alongside the dragons with whom the Ba’Suon share an empathic connection.
A decade later and under a fragile truce, Méka returns home from her exile for an ancient, necessary rite: gathering a king dragon of the Crown Mountains to maintain balance in the wild country. But Méka’s act of compassion toward an imprisoned dragon and Lilley, a Kattakan veteran of the war, soon draws the ire of the imperialistic authorities. They order the unwelcome addition of an enigmatic Ba’Suon traitor named Raka to accompany Méka and Lilley to the mountains.
The journey is filled with dangers both within and without. As conflict threatens to reignite, the survival of the Ba’Suon people, their dragons, and the land itself will depend on the decisions – defiant or compliant – that Méka and her companions choose to make. But not even Méka, kin to the great dragons of the North, can anticipate the depth of the consequences to her world.
Fiction
Omake: Stories from the Warchild Universe
Independently published, 2020.
Synopsis
In the first collection of original stories based in the universe of the award winning novels WARCHILD, BURNDIVE, and CAGEBIRD, characters both familiar and new flesh out the worlds and lives impacted by a generational interstellar war. Included are the author’s story notes, a glossary of the striviirc-na language, and the first chapter of the fourth novel in the mosaic series, MATRYOSHKA.
Fiction
Warchild
Synopsis (From the 2023 edition)
Eight-year-old Jos Musey knows little beyond the safe haven of his family aboard the merchant ship Mukudori — until a ruthless pirate destroys his world, slaughtering the adults and enslaving the children. Jos endures a year of terror only to fall into the hands of Earth’s alien enemies, far beyond human space. Trained by an inscrutable warrior, Jos becomes weaponized against his own people. Now every new friendship or complicated loyalty might lead to a lethal betrayal, and Jos must choose if he should follow the man who saved him…or save himself.
Links
Karin Lowachee personal website
Publisher Hachette Book Group, owner of the Orbit imprint
Publisher Solaris, an imprint of Rebellion Publishing