* Author Joey Yu, recipient of the inaugural George R. R. Martin Terran Award

* Contracted short story writer for League of Legends’s canon universe

A catastrophe has left the Earth blanketed in snow, and sunlight is remembered only in legend. Most of humanity has been forced to take refuge underground, but parties of Shade Riders desperately search the harsh alien-infested surface for the relics of Earth’s forgotten past – most of all, the legendary Sword of Eternal Light, said to contain the last ray of sunlight.

In the year 2041, a meteor crashes into the Pacific Ocean, altering the face of the Earth forever. Within a decade, the sky is sealed behind an impenetrable wall of steely clouds and perpetual snowfall blankets the world in white. Civilizations perish as all surface plant-life withers to dust. “Sunlight” fades from human memory, becoming a legend from a bygone age, an object of worship for humans who have never witnessed it.

The advent of the sunless era coincides with the arrival of two mysterious life forms: a race of monstrous aliens that roam the endless expanses of snow, and the enigmatic snow spirits that are harnessed by a band of brave humans to fight the aliens.

These are the Shade Riders, the only humans still capable of traversing the frigid surface of the Earth. Using the power of the snow spirits, they glide over the icy terrain on hand-crafted soulboards, carrying intricately carved blades imbued with arcane powers. The Shade Riders explore ancient ruins, locate food sources in the constantly shifting landscape, and fight to protect the last outpost of humanity: Vaiytomo, a cavernous underground city illuminated by glowworms, located in what was once Oceania.

But humanity’s grim fate changes when a young Shade Rider, Lukai, discovers a map of an ancient Earth that is almost unrecognizable – and on the map, the location of an artifact that may contain “the last ray of Sunlight”, saved from the times before the skies closed.

The Sunlight Trilogy is a futuristic fantasy series set in a meticulously crafted world, told through multiple points-of-view by characters who must confront menacing external threats, and the cage of their own beliefs. This is the tale of the heroes of the distant future, the riders of spirit-inhabited boards soaring over an icebound wasteland… this is the tale of Sunlight.