When seventeen year old Toby McGonigal finds himself lost in space, he expects his next drift into cold sleep to be his last. After all, the planet he’s orbiting is frozen and sunless, and the cities are dead. But when Toby wakes again, he’s surprised to discover a thriving planet, a strange and prosperous galaxy, and something stranger still…

That he’s been asleep for 14,000 years.

LOCKSTEP

Years Hidden in a Night

Winner of the 2015 Aurora Award for Best YA Novel

Welcome to the Lockstep Empire, where civilization is kept alive by careful hibernation. Here cold sleep can last decades and waking time mere weeks. Its citizens survive for millennia, traveling asleep on long voyages between worlds. Not only is Lockstep the new center of the galaxy, but Toby is shocked to learn that the Empire is still ruled by its founding family: his own.

Toby’s brother Peter has become a terrible tyrant. Suspicious of the return of his long-lost brother,  whose rightful inheritance also controls the lockstep hibernation cycles, Peter sees Toby as a threat to his regime. Now, with the help of a lockstep girl named Corva, Toby must survive the forces of this new Empire, outwit his siblings, and save human civilization.

School Library Journal featured Lockstep in its Best Books 4 Teens 2014 list.

  • Lean and hugely engaging ... and highly recommended.

    —Open Letters Monthly, an Arts and Literature Review

  • Lockstep tells a dense and textured story: a family-history mystery, a revolutionary adventure, and glimpses of Stapledonian panoramas, all studded with marvels and vistas and appealing science-fictional ideas and devices... dizzying and rich.

    —Locus

  • [Schroeder] transported a small part of space opera back in time, resurrecting something considered dead. He created conditions under which the charm and wonder of classic space opera could live again.

    —The New York Review of Science Fiction

  • Karl Schroeder expertly draws us into this richly-imagined future corner of the galaxy and keeps the action moving at a pace that won't let you take any breaks for a nap.

    —Toronto Star

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