Cressida Troy is returning to Earth carrying considerably more than the responsibilities of an empress. She is human, she rules the Lunarians who conquered her species, she is grieving her husband, and she is about to face Queen Victoria while trying to build an alliance against an approaching Martian war. Cressida’s Circle, the ninth book in Mikala Ash’s Empire of the Sky series, places that divided loyalty at the center of a story where witchcraft, Victorian politics, extraterrestrial power, and complicated desire are already pulling in different directions. Lady Neva’s plan to seize both the crown and control beyond Earth raises the political stakes, but Cressida’s search for redemption gives this steampunk conflict its particularly personal edge.
Steampunk Adventure Romance
Series: Empire of the Sky, Book 9
Date Published: September 11, 2026
Publisher: Changeling Press LLC
In a world overthrown by witchcraft, a giant love has been lost. Can Cressida be saved?
Mourning the loss of her husband, Cressida Troy is on her way to Earth. Her mission; to meet the Queen of England and cement relations between the Lunarians and humans to present a united front in the approaching war with the Martians. For Cressida, the mission has a much deeper and personal meaning. Being human, as well as the Lunarian Empress, Cressida is plagued by doubt and guilt and seeks redemption for what is seen by many as the betrayal of her species. Matters are complicated when she is kidnapped by the pernicious witch, Lady Neva, who is hell-bent on revenge against Queen Victoria. Armed with unlimited magical power, Lady Neva is planning to usurp the crown and rule both Earth and space.
Meanwhile Jacob McLeary, Cressida’s former fiancé, is under the watchful and lascivious eye of Lavinia Branscombe, a Lunarian agent. Knowledge of the dark secret at the heart of the Lunarian society fuels Jacob’s loathing of the aliens, but with so much at stake, can love overcome the barrier of hate? Will Cressida find redemption?
The most intriguing tension in Cressida’s Circle comes from Cressida occupying two identities that cannot easily be reconciled: she is both human and Lunarian Empress. Her diplomatic return to Earth therefore carries the weight of a homecoming, a political negotiation, and an encounter with people who may regard her as responsible for their conquest. Mikala Ash complicates that conflict further by setting it against an alternate Victorian world where Queen Victoria, lunar society, Martian warfare, witchcraft, and spacecraft all belong to the same political landscape. The result is a story concerned not simply with who holds power, but with what loyalty, love, and redemption mean when allegiance to one world can look like betrayal to another.
Readers who have followed the Empire of the Sky series will find Cressida facing consequences that reach across both her private life and her rule, while newcomers drawn to elaborate alternate histories may be intrigued by the collision of Victorian monarchy, lunar conquest, Martian conflict, and powerful witchcraft. The book also has a strong fit for those who like their steampunk unapologetically adult and their romance tangled into questions of political allegiance. Cressida’s need for redemption, Jacob’s hostility toward the Lunarians, and Lady Neva’s designs on Queen Victoria make personal relationships part of the same struggle that could determine who controls Earth and space.
Aussie Mikala Ash used to be a mild-mannered training & development consultant by day, and a wild sci-fi and paranormal adventure writer by night. Now she is a brazen full-time writer and nature photographer who is concentrating on having among other things, “… bags, and bags of fun!” Mikala can be found on Facebook and on Twitter.
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Cressida’s Circle gives its heroine an unusually difficult homecoming: Earth is the world she belongs to by birth, but she returns as empress of the society that conquered it. That contradiction makes her meeting with Queen Victoria, the threat from Lady Neva, and the coming Martian conflict more than separate pieces of an adventure plot. Each one presses on the same question of where Cressida belongs and what redemption would actually require. Add Jacob’s resentment of Lunarian society and the series’ mixture of spacecraft, magic, Victorian power struggles, and adult romance, and this ninth Empire of the Sky story has several worlds circling the same deeply personal conflict.
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