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The Elite and the Rogues #1
The Elitist Supremacy
Alexander Selwood is hiding many secrets. Being the first immortal is only one of them. He is also hunted by the despotic ruler of Cynfor, Cesar Thaxter -the man ruling the galaxy for centuries.
Unknown to Alexander, the group of rebels who had been fighting Thaxter in secret is also seeking to use his company to build a safe haven. He would do anything to keep himself from falling into the clutches of either the Resistance or the Supreme Ruler. When the consequences of his actions cascade into a torrent of events that threatens to engulf him and everyone he cares for in danger, Alexander can't sit on the sidelines any longer.
Having stayed out of the conflict for this long, he has to make a choice, but can he handle the repercussions of that decision?
Unknown to Alexander, the group of rebels who had been fighting Thaxter in secret is also seeking to use his company to build a safe haven. He would do anything to keep himself from falling into the clutches of either the Resistance or the Supreme Ruler. When the consequences of his actions cascade into a torrent of events that threatens to engulf him and everyone he cares for in danger, Alexander can't sit on the sidelines any longer.
Having stayed out of the conflict for this long, he has to make a choice, but can he handle the repercussions of that decision?
- GenresScience FictionQueerLGBT
271 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 24, 2023
30 people are currently reading
142 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 10, 2023
Outstanding
Wow, was this a thoroughly enjoyable read. There wasn't much traditional "action", but the book more than made up for it with the world building, layered loyalties and gripping intrigue--very Machiavellian. It pulled me in with the many complex characters caught in the middle of a conflict between a far future authoritarian state and a brutalized rebellion. Then there was that ending! Nice wrap with a shocking twist.
Wow, was this a thoroughly enjoyable read. There wasn't much traditional "action", but the book more than made up for it with the world building, layered loyalties and gripping intrigue--very Machiavellian. It pulled me in with the many complex characters caught in the middle of a conflict between a far future authoritarian state and a brutalized rebellion. Then there was that ending! Nice wrap with a shocking twist.
February 17, 2025
A tangled web of intrigue and hidden histories. I can’t wait to read what happens next! Niranjan has weaved the beginnings of an epic spanning centuries but intimate as it draws you into the lives of those who cannot die.
October 5, 2020
What a grand story.
Niranjan was honored on my author blog during the month of October 2020 for Indie Author Appreciation Month, and I was honored by the request to read and review this story. Niranjan K pens a remarkable story in The Elitist Supremacy. I haven't read anything from this author before, and I really enjoyed this story. The characters were not only enigmatic, but had levels of depth that made them come to life. This author brings the story to life. It's a great sci-fi story, but it also has a majestic level of fantasy. The story brings in the believable, even if almost impossible. This book deserves a second read! (and maybe more). This story was intriguing and kept the reader guessing. I look forward to reading many more stories by this author. This book is a definite recommendation by Amy's Bookshelf Reviews.
Niranjan was honored on my author blog during the month of October 2020 for Indie Author Appreciation Month, and I was honored by the request to read and review this story. Niranjan K pens a remarkable story in The Elitist Supremacy. I haven't read anything from this author before, and I really enjoyed this story. The characters were not only enigmatic, but had levels of depth that made them come to life. This author brings the story to life. It's a great sci-fi story, but it also has a majestic level of fantasy. The story brings in the believable, even if almost impossible. This book deserves a second read! (and maybe more). This story was intriguing and kept the reader guessing. I look forward to reading many more stories by this author. This book is a definite recommendation by Amy's Bookshelf Reviews.
October 9, 2025
In short (*pause for laughter*), The Elitist Supremacy is a sci-fi espionage thriller with some nice interweaving of future tech and future history with human storylines. What does that mean? Well, in the distant future of 2936, people are still very much people. And having a bunch of new toys to play with doesn’t change that. It just changes the way the same old primitive dance is performed. It is nothing if not a story about the lengths people will go to in protection of those they love, whether that is a child, a partner, or … well, themselves.
Warning: There may be random spoilers throughout the rest of this review, mainly because I just don’t know how to discuss half of what happened here without spoiling something.
In 2241 an execution goes awry, and from that interesting opening we jump forward 695 years to find that humanity has gone interplanetary and is now ruled by “the State” (or “Cynfor”), and the “Elites” at its core. The Elites, led by the shadowy Cesar Thaxter, are immortals and practically indestructible, because of the thing we sort of saw happening in the prologue. It’s actually a pretty cool concept, there’s no shortage of them in this book. A lot of these immortals are sealed up in stasis prison, but the ruling class is basically above the law. And there is a Resistance, with more Elites (or “Rogues”, hence the name of the series) at its core.
This is the set-up, and a lot of the book is dedicated to establishing this in preparation for the rest of the series. The story in this book is a little bit all-over-the-place as a result, as we skip from group to group and planet to planet getting all our pieces in position. The Resistance is looking to find a safe base of operations out from under the all-seeing and all-knowing technocracy of the State, and there is a lot of manoeuvring to allow that to happen. Against this backdrop, the very human stories of love and trauma unfold quite nicely in their simplicity. Families torn apart and brought together, political and corporate intrigue, and some good old-fashioned technobabble and action sequences keep it all bubbling along nicely and give the world (worlds) good depth and texture.
Where I really had trouble was the characters.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel like the two main guys – Alexander Selwood and (by the end) Nolan Patrick – are compelling and I knew where they stood and who they were. They have backstories that demand exploration, as one would expect from (at least in Alexander’s case) immortals whose origins (or family origins, in Nolan’s case) are scattered through almost seven hundred years of future history, but they were put together well enough to make me want to explore that.
Other than those two, there was one character I was expecting to be used more. There’s this kid, Paige, with a little bit of a neurodivergent superpower that enables her to tell when someone is good or bad. That was a really interesting hook and made me remember the character … but then she appeared like one time after her intro in chapters 5 to 7, to deliver a little exposition about aliens which was the only time that was mentioned, and that was it. And yeah, I have notes about that. But okay.
The rest of the characters and their relationships, motivations and interwoven stories are extremely convoluted and it’s not helped by a lot of them having what I felt were very generic names and (if even mentioned at all) appearances. And that a lot of them have different names and identities at different points in history, as one would expect from shadowy immortals. This is at once an excellent part of the story, and a frustratingly confusing element. Sometimes it is treated as a plot revelation (to reader and characters alike), and at other times it is hard to tell if it has just appeared that way because that’s how the story is structured.
I listed a bunch of characters and the relationships I think I figured out, and put it in spoilertext on my main blog review, but I will cut it from this one.
I liked the future history as laid out, and the technological advances we get to see. The teleportation tech, stasis tech, the A.I.s and the Nishati dimension (which was kind of related to the teleportation, teleportation had existed before but since Nishati was discovered teleportation had improved), Zhidium and DNA tracking, teleportation blockers and the various weapons they’d come up with to battle Elites … it was all very cool, and I think it should have been forefronted more. Especially as the Elites (I am using this as a shorthand for all the assorted immortal characters) had a first-hand connection to a lot of those developments and discoveries. There’s so much potential to explore there!
Oh yeah, and speaking of the A.I. assistants (the Sentients), they all have very normal names and are sometimes easy to confuse with people in the way they are referred to and talked about – again, a potentially cool idea that risked being frustrating and confusing at times. April, Miley, Quinn, June, I think Martin might also be one but it’s only mentioned once in the first chapter … Niek says he thought all Sentients were named April at one point. And the Sentients have bots, and manage teleportation and other conveniences. There’s a lot to unpack there too.
The setting is also endlessly fascinating, with interplanetary civilisation apparently made possible by teleportation but not really fully info-dumped in a way probably only I would have wanted to see. There’s Ignis, a hot and inhospitable planet with habitats … we don’t get a really good idea of what most of these worlds are like and how the systems are set up, is it a local group of systems or spread across the galaxy? Multiple galaxies? Like I say, farther systems and aliens are mentioned one time and that’s it. The Nishati dimension is used for the transportation of stuff, but the characters are planning some use of the technology that could mess Ignis up, but also aid in their transport of habitat materials and water or whatever to make the planet profitable … it’s difficult to track. There are other planets mentioned as well. Ytres, Nizhoni, Aeras, Hafi, Prith … and Earth is mentioned once in passing, as the origin world but there isn’t any clue as to whether it is now gone or where these all relate to each other.
Our setup ends on a cliffhanger as Thaxter calls Nolan and they start to make a deal about Nolan’s father. I’ve gone on way too long here, let’s take a look at the meters real quick.
Sex-o-meter
George and Alexander have one tasteful off-screen doink and that’s about it. Aside from that, and a lot of flirting and mooning and amusingly awkward don’t-they-realise-I’m-gay discomfort from Nolan, this is a pretty tame one. One mutually bristly yet warmly comforting cologne-scented firm-bicep’d man-kiss out of a possible five for The Elitist Supremacy.
Gore-o-meter
No gore to speak of. The spikes are a bit nasty (especially in the final scenes), the Elites are immortal so they can take a bit of damage but we don’t see much of it, and all in all I’m giving this one a mere half a flesh-gobbet out of a possible five.
WTF-o-meter
There is some good old-fashioned espionage-mystery in here, and the fuzzy line between “past” (still the future, for us) and “present” (distant future) is fascinating and I hope it’s further explored in the rest of the trilogy. And the Nishati dimension and of course the aliens are great WTF fodder. There’s just not enough of it to feed a growing boy, that’s all. A “concept of WTF as a kind of food stuffed into a nose-bag for readers to chew on” out of a possible “aliens walk into an exposition scene in a secret room in Nishati and say ‘what the fuck are you upright apes doing in our cloud storage’ in alien at the expositioning characters” for this one, if you follow my convoluted grammatical logic. And if you don’t, tough.
My Final Verdict
I didn’t spot a character named Garth in here. But I had a good time reading it and it left me thinking about a lot of stuff, so even if the character tangle left me feeling dumb, I came away with a positive vibe. Give it a try, maybe! Three stars, I say.
Warning: There may be random spoilers throughout the rest of this review, mainly because I just don’t know how to discuss half of what happened here without spoiling something.
In 2241 an execution goes awry, and from that interesting opening we jump forward 695 years to find that humanity has gone interplanetary and is now ruled by “the State” (or “Cynfor”), and the “Elites” at its core. The Elites, led by the shadowy Cesar Thaxter, are immortals and practically indestructible, because of the thing we sort of saw happening in the prologue. It’s actually a pretty cool concept, there’s no shortage of them in this book. A lot of these immortals are sealed up in stasis prison, but the ruling class is basically above the law. And there is a Resistance, with more Elites (or “Rogues”, hence the name of the series) at its core.
This is the set-up, and a lot of the book is dedicated to establishing this in preparation for the rest of the series. The story in this book is a little bit all-over-the-place as a result, as we skip from group to group and planet to planet getting all our pieces in position. The Resistance is looking to find a safe base of operations out from under the all-seeing and all-knowing technocracy of the State, and there is a lot of manoeuvring to allow that to happen. Against this backdrop, the very human stories of love and trauma unfold quite nicely in their simplicity. Families torn apart and brought together, political and corporate intrigue, and some good old-fashioned technobabble and action sequences keep it all bubbling along nicely and give the world (worlds) good depth and texture.
Where I really had trouble was the characters.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel like the two main guys – Alexander Selwood and (by the end) Nolan Patrick – are compelling and I knew where they stood and who they were. They have backstories that demand exploration, as one would expect from (at least in Alexander’s case) immortals whose origins (or family origins, in Nolan’s case) are scattered through almost seven hundred years of future history, but they were put together well enough to make me want to explore that.
Other than those two, there was one character I was expecting to be used more. There’s this kid, Paige, with a little bit of a neurodivergent superpower that enables her to tell when someone is good or bad. That was a really interesting hook and made me remember the character … but then she appeared like one time after her intro in chapters 5 to 7, to deliver a little exposition about aliens which was the only time that was mentioned, and that was it. And yeah, I have notes about that. But okay.
The rest of the characters and their relationships, motivations and interwoven stories are extremely convoluted and it’s not helped by a lot of them having what I felt were very generic names and (if even mentioned at all) appearances. And that a lot of them have different names and identities at different points in history, as one would expect from shadowy immortals. This is at once an excellent part of the story, and a frustratingly confusing element. Sometimes it is treated as a plot revelation (to reader and characters alike), and at other times it is hard to tell if it has just appeared that way because that’s how the story is structured.
I listed a bunch of characters and the relationships I think I figured out, and put it in spoilertext on my main blog review, but I will cut it from this one.
I liked the future history as laid out, and the technological advances we get to see. The teleportation tech, stasis tech, the A.I.s and the Nishati dimension (which was kind of related to the teleportation, teleportation had existed before but since Nishati was discovered teleportation had improved), Zhidium and DNA tracking, teleportation blockers and the various weapons they’d come up with to battle Elites … it was all very cool, and I think it should have been forefronted more. Especially as the Elites (I am using this as a shorthand for all the assorted immortal characters) had a first-hand connection to a lot of those developments and discoveries. There’s so much potential to explore there!
Oh yeah, and speaking of the A.I. assistants (the Sentients), they all have very normal names and are sometimes easy to confuse with people in the way they are referred to and talked about – again, a potentially cool idea that risked being frustrating and confusing at times. April, Miley, Quinn, June, I think Martin might also be one but it’s only mentioned once in the first chapter … Niek says he thought all Sentients were named April at one point. And the Sentients have bots, and manage teleportation and other conveniences. There’s a lot to unpack there too.
The setting is also endlessly fascinating, with interplanetary civilisation apparently made possible by teleportation but not really fully info-dumped in a way probably only I would have wanted to see. There’s Ignis, a hot and inhospitable planet with habitats … we don’t get a really good idea of what most of these worlds are like and how the systems are set up, is it a local group of systems or spread across the galaxy? Multiple galaxies? Like I say, farther systems and aliens are mentioned one time and that’s it. The Nishati dimension is used for the transportation of stuff, but the characters are planning some use of the technology that could mess Ignis up, but also aid in their transport of habitat materials and water or whatever to make the planet profitable … it’s difficult to track. There are other planets mentioned as well. Ytres, Nizhoni, Aeras, Hafi, Prith … and Earth is mentioned once in passing, as the origin world but there isn’t any clue as to whether it is now gone or where these all relate to each other.
Our setup ends on a cliffhanger as Thaxter calls Nolan and they start to make a deal about Nolan’s father. I’ve gone on way too long here, let’s take a look at the meters real quick.
Sex-o-meter
George and Alexander have one tasteful off-screen doink and that’s about it. Aside from that, and a lot of flirting and mooning and amusingly awkward don’t-they-realise-I’m-gay discomfort from Nolan, this is a pretty tame one. One mutually bristly yet warmly comforting cologne-scented firm-bicep’d man-kiss out of a possible five for The Elitist Supremacy.
Gore-o-meter
No gore to speak of. The spikes are a bit nasty (especially in the final scenes), the Elites are immortal so they can take a bit of damage but we don’t see much of it, and all in all I’m giving this one a mere half a flesh-gobbet out of a possible five.
WTF-o-meter
There is some good old-fashioned espionage-mystery in here, and the fuzzy line between “past” (still the future, for us) and “present” (distant future) is fascinating and I hope it’s further explored in the rest of the trilogy. And the Nishati dimension and of course the aliens are great WTF fodder. There’s just not enough of it to feed a growing boy, that’s all. A “concept of WTF as a kind of food stuffed into a nose-bag for readers to chew on” out of a possible “aliens walk into an exposition scene in a secret room in Nishati and say ‘what the fuck are you upright apes doing in our cloud storage’ in alien at the expositioning characters” for this one, if you follow my convoluted grammatical logic. And if you don’t, tough.
My Final Verdict
I didn’t spot a character named Garth in here. But I had a good time reading it and it left me thinking about a lot of stuff, so even if the character tangle left me feeling dumb, I came away with a positive vibe. Give it a try, maybe! Three stars, I say.
July 29, 2024
Title: The Elitist Supremacy
Author: Niranjan K
⭐️⭐️⭐️
This is your classic space saga with a twist of genius tech lord.
The rebels want to take down the state, and the only way to do it is to win over the one man who wants nothing to do with either side.
This story is a nice spin on a classic trope. There are a lot of characters, though, and alias for a good handful of those characters. So, while it gets confusing, jumping from one group to the next at times, I think overall it has good bones.
The world building was expertly crafted, there's a spinkling of diversity, and there's a fun twist at the end.
If you love morally gray MCs and futuristic tech alongside good vs. evil politics than this one is for you!
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Author: Niranjan K
⭐️⭐️⭐️
This is your classic space saga with a twist of genius tech lord.
The rebels want to take down the state, and the only way to do it is to win over the one man who wants nothing to do with either side.
This story is a nice spin on a classic trope. There are a lot of characters, though, and alias for a good handful of those characters. So, while it gets confusing, jumping from one group to the next at times, I think overall it has good bones.
The world building was expertly crafted, there's a spinkling of diversity, and there's a fun twist at the end.
If you love morally gray MCs and futuristic tech alongside good vs. evil politics than this one is for you!
⭐️⭐️⭐️
April 20, 2021
Though the beginning felt like it wasn't sure what story it wanted to tell it found it's stride and really went for it. That ending :O When is the next book coming out???
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews