Chronin Volume 1: The Knife at Your Back

February 18, 2019 9:49 PM

Chronin Volume 1: The Knife at Your Back
In 2018, I completed work on Chronin, a queer historical SF duology and my debut as a solo graphic novelist. It follows Mirai Yoshida, a college student in an elite program which uses time travel for research, who finds herself trapped in 1860s Japan as civil war is brewing. The complete arc is 730 pages. Today, Volume 1 is out in the world.

A longer summary:

2042, New York City: A day in the life of college student Mirai Yoshida means studying Japanese history, learning swordmanship, flirting with her TA, and preparing to travel back in time to the Japan of 1864. But everything changes when Mirai and her classmates are ambushed by rebel samurai. Her friends are killed, her time travel machine is lost, and Mirai ends up marooned in the past. In order to survive, she disguises herself as a wandering samurai and is hired by Hatsu, a tea shop waitress, as bodyguard for her travels. Mirai has to find her way back to the future soon, or else she may end up a casualty on the bloody front lines of a conflict that’s destined to shape a nation.

I've been working on this project on and off since 2005, and so it's incredibly surreal to have it exist as a physical object which strangers can go and buy in a store. I'm grateful to Tor, my publisher, for taking such good care of this series. I'm so damn nervous I don't know what to do with myself.

Chronin Volume 2: The Sword in Your Hand will follow in September.

Role: author

posted by Narrative Priorities (2 comments total)

Chronin's Elegant, Minimalist Samurai Adventure Is – Literally – Timeless
posted by XMLicious at 1:42 AM on February 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

That review came in the morning of my book release party, it was a pretty amazing bit of news for my editor, my publicist and me!
posted by Narrative Priorities at 4:19 AM on March 1, 2019