Zhan-Yo: Revolution's Heart

Continuing a short series looking at the starring characters in The Hero's Code. The series final two novels will be launching this fall, and in a bid to catch people up on the who's who, here are some swift blurbs about the bunch.

If The Hero's Code means nothing to you and you'd like to fix that, you can snag the series starter, Paragon's Fall, just about anywhere for free (in ebook).

Wars ended. Debate, disagreement vanished as the Champions and their Paragons stomped over the world and took it for their own. Using their genetic goods to remake societies all over the globe into their preferred form, Aegis and his team erased millennia of human struggle and replaced it with a new form of rule. Like the kings of old, a certain divine right conferred this time by cells instead of God.

Not everyone saw the new as better than the old. Zhan-Yo, leader of the world's premier communications company, saw the Champions come in and destroy his influence, his dreams of a truly democratic society. His company, Ziran, provided and proliferated the Tama, a wrist-bound device able to connect every citizen with every other . . . and now that ubiquitous level-setter served to send the Paragons all the tracking data they could want. Now Zhan-Yo had no say in the matter, and neither did his neighbors, his employees, their families.

After a lifetime in the executive's office, Zhan-Yo found his initial forays towards the Paragons disregarded. No chance for a renegotiation on society's remake. Such a blanket refusal curdled in the man's mind, prompting a slow, incessant question: shouldn't Zhan-Yo, with all his resources, all his connections, do more to bring the masses back into the equation?

With methods and means both subtle and strong, Zhan-Yo began assembling like-minded power-brokers. Industry leaders chaffing at their waning influence, civil supporters left without recourse as Paragons refused to play with their causes. Any overt displays would be met with body-crushing force, so Zhan-Yo slipped into the shadow game.

And, as he goes further and further into the dark, Zhan-Yo's finding it harder and harder to hold on to his original vision. A more compelling, a more immediate action suggests itself: to rebuild a new society, you first have to destroy the old.

The Champions did it. Perhaps Zhan-Yo can too.