Skylight

Those who control the future are those who control the present.

Skylight is a world on the cusp of modern technology, but is being throttled by its vast geography, conflict between its scattered, isolationist people, and a mysterious barrier in the atmosphere making space travel impossible.

The coastal city-state of Margate is surrounded by war and wilderness, and uses its one valuable resource to keep itself prosperous: its youth. Each city district has a facility that doubles as a boarding school and a governing body, and leaders of education and leaders of politics are one in the same. Children of Margate ascend through thesecasterlansunder the government’s watchful eyes.

Jess Hempstead, an intrepid and quietly observant political student from the district of the Ridge, and second in line to the Ridge’s chief position ofmajor, finds that her studies are becoming all too real when the Ridge’s current major, Fiona Doyle, is arrested in Margate’s Inner City under suspicions of assassinating a major official. Jess is personally requested by Doyle to represent her and investigate the crime, and finds herself pushing into the rotten underbelly of the central nexus of power she has looked up to her whole life.

Meanwhile, other students at the Ridge reel in response to their district being put under fire and public scrutiny, and they must deal with the encroaching ambitions of rival district Highvale, the savage threat of the raiding suburbans who live in the wilds beyond the city, and the hints of a dark, supernatural mystery that dates back to the dawn of their civilization.