Hollow Empire

by Sam Hawke

  Publicist

  Renata Sweeney

  Marketing

  Irene Gallo

  Art Director

  Peter Lutjen

  Art Director

  Greg Ruth

  Cover Art

  Jamie Stafford-Hill

  Cover/Jacket Design

  Jennifer Gunnels

  In-House Editor

  Molly Majumder

  Editorial Assistant

  Kristin Temple

  Editorial Assistant

  Megan Kiddoo

  Production Editor

  Christina MacDonald

  Copy Editor

  Greg Collins

  Designer

  Lani Meyer

  Proofreader

  Laura Dragonette

  Proofreader

  And for the UK/ANZ edition:

  Simon Taylor

  Editor

  Richard Shailer

  Cover Design

  Phil Evans

  Production

  Lilly Cox

  Marketing

  Izzie Ghaffari-Parker

  Publicity

  Josh Benn

  Managing Editorial

  And the wonderful Sales Team: Deirdre, Emily, Gareth, Gary, Hannah, Natalie, and Tom. And a big shout-out to Lucy Ballantyne and Bec Cowie and the great folks at Penguin Random House Australia who brought my book to my hometown.

  And, of course, my agent Julie Crisp. Thanks for calmly dealing with my all-caps WhatsApp messages and always being in my corner.

  * * *

  On the personal side, first and foremost, thanks always to my boys: K, Dean, and Liam, who enable the madness of this second career with good humor and patience, supportive cups of tea and surprise chocolate deliveries, and tolerance of my strange behaviors. (Mummy, I heard you go for a walk in the middle of the night! Yes, buddy, yes you did. Mummy had to solve a plot hole in her pajamas at one in the morning. Thank you for understanding.) Oh, and the occasional brutal ransom of an innocent and extremely cute pair of shoes.* You three always have my whole heart, and none of this would work without you.

  Thanks to my brilliant and generous sister Meg, always my first reader and cheerleader, for listening to me talk through endless plot problems and helping me solve them, for proofreading and poison-inventing, and literally setting alarms in the middle of the night to wake up and check on me when I was pulling an all-nighter. Thanks also to my other wonderful sister Net, who also proofread and formatted this giant sucker under ridiculously tight turnaround times. Special thanks to Mum, Dad, and Stephie for last minute typo checks! And thank you as always to the rest of my incredibly supportive extended family—I love you all and so appreciate your consistent interest and encouragement. Likewise to my friends, many of whom suffered through buying—and even reading!—a fantasy book for the first time just to support me. You guys rock.

  If I had one bit of advice to give emerging writers it would be this: find yourself some pals in the industry and appreciate the hell out of them. I feel very fortunate to have, largely accidentally, landed in some wonderful groups of friends and colleagues over the course of the last few years who have made the world of publishing so much more fun. Huge thanks to my glorious friends who beta read one or more versions of this behemoth for me and lent their genius (geniuses? geni?) to make me better—Devin Madson, Kai Doore, Shannon Chakraborty, E. J. Beaton, RJ Theodore, and Russell Kirkpatrick—and an entire ticker parade–level thank-you to Anna Stephens for real-time beta reading and sanity checks, and keeping me motivated through many weeks of very late nights. I really could not have done this without you, you spectacular Goblin, you. And another special shout-out to AJ Spedding who did late-night moral support and productivity sprints with me on the previous manuscript. Also my IRL writing and cocktails buddies Leife and Freya, and my writing S(l)ack and Discord friends, who are an endless source of support, distraction, motivation, and silliness, mixed with brilliant insightful discussions (even if a remarkable number of them somehow end up being about the Untamed). I have murdered as many of you as possible in this book, as a sign of my love.

  And I’d be remiss to leave off the community of readers, booksellers, librarians, bloggers, BookTubers, and podcasters who enjoyed the first book and talked about it—special thanks to the Fantasy Inn crew, to my Aussie booksellers who supported the hell out of me for City (especially Claire, Jeremy, Paige, and Stefen). I appreciate every one of you, and the pleasure I get from hearing that someone connected with the characters or the story never gets old. Thank you for being patient and hanging in there with me for the sequel. You make it worth it.

  ALSO BY SAM HAWKE

  City of Lies

  About the Author

  SAM HAWKE considered several careers (including zookeeper) before choosing law, getting a black belt in jujitsu, and starting to write. She lives with her husband and children in Australia. City of Lies was her first novel.

  Visit her online at samhawkeswrites.com, or sign up for email updates here.

  Twitter: @samhawkewrites

  facebook.com/samhawkewrites

  Thank you for buying this

  Tom Doherty Associates ebook.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  1. Jovan

  2. Kalina

  3. Jovan

  4. Kalina

  5. Jovan

  6. Kalina

  7. Jovan

  8. Kalina

  9. Jovan

  10. Kalina

  11. Jovan

  12. Kalina

  13. Jovan

  14. Kalina

  15. Jovan

  16. Kalina

  17. Jovan

  18. Kalina

  19. Jovan

  20. Kalina

  21. Jovan

  22. Kalina

  23. Jovan

  24. Kalina

  25. Jovan

  26. Kalina

  27. Jovan

  28. Kalina

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Sam Hawke

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  HOLLOW EMPIRE

  Copyright © 2020 by Sam Hawke

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Greg Ruth

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  120 Broadway

  New York, NY 10271

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9694-5 (trade paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-250-20708-1 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9699-0 (ebook)

  eISBN 9780765396990

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: 2020

  * No shoes were harmed in the making of this book. At least, not physically harmed. The emotional scars will be there forever.

 

 

 
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