Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from The Empress by S.J. Kincaid which I was very excited to receive from NetGalley and couldn’t resist reading immediately. It’s the follow up to The Diabolic, one of my favorite books last year, and is just about as brilliant. It is a sci fi rather than a horror but I’ve managed to find a teaser that’s perfect for Halloween.

I do need to add a warning that while my teaser is spoiler free the blurb below is not so don’t read it if you haven’t read the Diabolic (and were thinking about it).

My Teaser

And that felt right, and then I realized I was talking to a corpse and this was ridiculous. This was something a crazy person would do. I turned and walked away from the corpse. I had a book now.

~ 77% The Empress by S.J. Kincaid

Blurb

It’s a new day in the Empire. Tyrus has ascended to the throne with Nemesis by his side and now they can find a new way forward—one where they don’t have to hide or scheme or kill. One where creatures like Nemesis will be given worth and recognition, where science and information can be shared with everyone and not just the elite.

But having power isn’t the same thing as keeping it, and change isn’t always welcome. The ruling class, the Grandiloquy, has held control over planets and systems for centuries—and they are plotting to stop this teenage Emperor and Nemesis, who is considered nothing more than a creature and certainly not worthy of being Empress.

Nemesis will protect Tyrus at any cost. He is the love of her life, and they are partners in this new beginning. But she cannot protect him by being the killing machine she once was. She will have to prove the humanity that she’s found inside herself to the whole Empire—or she and Tyrus may lose more than just the throne. But if proving her humanity means that she and Tyrus must do inhuman things, is the fight worth the cost of winning it?