CAVEAT EMPTOR

Short Description

The corporate-controlled world is beginning to collapse. Attacks designed to create instability strike corporations around the globe while America Incorporated struggles to maintain control. Meanwhile, the surviving members of Liberteum have been betrayed, hunted, and pushed toward extinction.

To complete the Archimedes plan, the resistance must make one desperate final push—and it cannot succeed without new allies. The conflict ultimately moves toward a full-scale invasion of Manhattan that may decide the future of corporate rule.

Genre

Caveat Emptor combines dystopian fiction, political thriller, military thriller, action, conspiracy, and speculative fiction.

Of the first four America, Inc. novels, it places particularly strong emphasis on warfare, revolution, shifting alliances, and the survival of the resistance.

Inspiration

The novel is a question about trust: Who can you rely upon when everyone offering help wants something in return? Liberteum needs allies to survive, corporate leaders need cooperation to restore order, and the global elite are pursuing competing visions of the future. Every alliance creates an opportunity, but every alliance also carries a price.

I wanted to explore whether people with fundamentally different goals could cooperate long enough to defeat a common threat. Revolution may unite people against an enemy, but it does not erase their competing loyalties, political ambitions, or disagreements about what should replace the system they are fighting. As desperation grows, former enemies become necessary partners, loyalty becomes conditional, and betrayal can be justified as an act of survival.

At its heart, Caveat Emptor examines trust, sacrifice, authoritarian power, military force, and alliances of necessity. It also pushes the corporate world into a deeper crisis, reshaping the relationships among Liberteum, America Incorporated, Intercorpex, and the global elite. Those consequences create the political and military landscape of Zero Sum Game, where the cost of every bargain becomes impossible to ignore.

Behind the Book: Caveat Emptor

• Caveat emptor means “let the buyer beware,” a fitting warning for a society in which nearly everything and everyone has a price and buying (or trusting) has consequences. Commerce and political power are inseparable in the world of America, Inc., so every bargain carries consequences beyond the transaction itself.

• I wanted readers to question every agreement in the novel. The most attractive offer may also contain the greatest danger. Deals made earlier in the series begin coming due, and several characters discover that the true cost was hidden in the fine print.

• The cold reunion between Farron and his father was intentional. Even before Denali reveals his intentions, the scene establishes that affection has little value in the Keating family when power is at stake.

• I enjoyed writing Michele’s defiance in Denali’s study. She knows she has lost control of the situation, but she refuses to give him the satisfaction of seeing her submit.

• I used the Meade Human Resources Center to turn familiar corporate language into something horrifying. “Processing” and “termination” have very literal meanings in America, Inc.

• Fiolla’s interrogation scene forces her to confront the machinery she once helped administer. Her previous position in corporate affairs makes her imprisonment at Meade especially ironic.

• The jug of urch shine in Ilaria’s apartment is more than a callback to the underground. It becomes proof that items dismissed by the corporate elite can unexpectedly affect the balance of power.

• Denali watching simultaneous attacks unfold around the world is one of the darkest scenes in the series. To him, the casualties are not people; they are figures on a display confirming that his plan is working.

• Modern military hardware isn’t a thing in this age, but old hardware is a different story. While there are no standing armies and navies in the Corporate Age, it doesn’t mean corporations don’t maintain small stockpiles of them. Thus, rolling out old M1 Abrams main battle tanks.

• I am a believer that necessity is the mother of invention. You knew the qulis would devise some cool weapons given the skills of their various trades.

• One of Murphy’s Laws of Combat states: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Director Virtari learns that the hard way.

• As AI continues to grow in both capability and popularity, Ortan’s system seems less far-fetched than it did when I envisioned this series.

• The book brings several long-running schemes into the open while revealing that some apparent victories were carefully constructed traps.

• The ending was designed to propel the series into Zero Sum Game, where compromise becomes increasingly difficult.