Primates don't fly

PRIMATES DON'T FLY.

That is the galaxy's verdict on humanity. For generations, Earth has been sending its pilots into the biggest and most dangerous race in the known universe-and for generations, they haven't returned.

Aleksander Brat is different. Not because he believes it, but because he's stopped asking.

At twenty-one years old, with thirteen years of training and a ship he named after his late mother, he starts last among fifty competitors in a race that lasts three days, leading through meteor showers, pulsar corridors, and right past black holes-and from which, statistically, no one returns alive.

On Earth, no one bets on whether he'll win.

People are betting on how many hours he'll last.

But then he flies. And flies. And doesn't stop.