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No Man's Land: Volume 1
ON SALE FOR 99c UNTIL FEBRUARY 18TH 2026
Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.
On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.
Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has you cannot know everything, don't get horizontal with the natives, don't make promises you can't keep.
They're a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip's already broken that one.
Now he's racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.
Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.
Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.
On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.
Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has you cannot know everything, don't get horizontal with the natives, don't make promises you can't keep.
They're a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip's already broken that one.
Now he's racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.
Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.
272 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 9, 2025
About the author
Sarah A. Hoyt
204 books177 followersSarah A. Hoyt was born (and raised) in Portugal and now lives in Colorado with her husband, two sons, and a variable number of cats, depending on how many show up to beg on the door step.
In between lays the sort of resume that used to be de-rigueur for writers. She has never actually wrestled alligators, but she did at one point very briefly tie bows on bags of potpourri for a living. She has also washed dishes and ironed clothes for a living. Worst of all she was, for a long time, a multilingual scientific translator.
At some point, though, she got tired of making an honest living and started writing. She has over 30 published novels, in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical mystery, historical fantasy and historical biography. Her short stories have been published in Analog, Asimov's, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, and a number of anthologies from DAW and Baen. Her space-opera novel Darkship Thieves was the 2011 Prometheus Award Winner, and the third novel in the series, A Few Good Men, was a finalist for the honor. She also won the Dragon Award for Uncharted (with Kevin J. Anderson.)
a.k.a. Sarah D'Almeida
a.k.a. Elise Hyatt
a.k.a. Sarah Marqués
In between lays the sort of resume that used to be de-rigueur for writers. She has never actually wrestled alligators, but she did at one point very briefly tie bows on bags of potpourri for a living. She has also washed dishes and ironed clothes for a living. Worst of all she was, for a long time, a multilingual scientific translator.
At some point, though, she got tired of making an honest living and started writing. She has over 30 published novels, in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical mystery, historical fantasy and historical biography. Her short stories have been published in Analog, Asimov's, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, and a number of anthologies from DAW and Baen. Her space-opera novel Darkship Thieves was the 2011 Prometheus Award Winner, and the third novel in the series, A Few Good Men, was a finalist for the honor. She also won the Dragon Award for Uncharted (with Kevin J. Anderson.)
a.k.a. Sarah D'Almeida
a.k.a. Elise Hyatt
a.k.a. Sarah Marqués
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 28, 2025
New world, new complications
In this latest series, Sarah Hoyt introduces a new world where the people are human but very different, the stakes are higher than anyone knows, and technology and magic are the same thing.
I'd write more,but I'm jumping into the second book because I can't wait.
In this latest series, Sarah Hoyt introduces a new world where the people are human but very different, the stakes are higher than anyone knows, and technology and magic are the same thing.
I'd write more,but I'm jumping into the second book because I can't wait.
April 21, 2026
Even better than I expected!
A bit of a roller coaster ride. Very well worked out with compelling characters and a riveting if complex storyline.
A bit of a roller coaster ride. Very well worked out with compelling characters and a riveting if complex storyline.
July 20, 2026
Sarah Hoyt's No Man's Land is the product of a vast and disciplined imagination, a world meticulously created yet capable of surprising us over and over again. Clues are laid in the early chapters and pages, and paid off deep into the story.
There are two protagonists. The first, Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden (known as 'Skip' for the sanity of all) is a war hero of spacefaring Britannia-on-High, war-weary before his years. The second, Eerlen Troz, is the archmage of a strange civilization: human, relying on powerful magic both for daily living and survival from invasion, and, strangest of all, hermaphrodite.
Skip's part is told in first person narrative, Eerlen's in close third, which helps the reader shift between their chapters and their worldviews. Hoyt slides almost invisibly between detailed narrative, deep backstory, and summary narrative. There are no pauses or speedbumps, no seams, just flowing story.
And that story braids mystery, danger, culture shock, and more with a strange meeting of magic and technology. Yet some things remain eternal: the way to a king's heart is still through his stomach.
Book One ends in a moment that tears at our hearts, showing how deeply we have come to care about the strange people Hoyt has drawn in the world of Elly.
There are two protagonists. The first, Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden (known as 'Skip' for the sanity of all) is a war hero of spacefaring Britannia-on-High, war-weary before his years. The second, Eerlen Troz, is the archmage of a strange civilization: human, relying on powerful magic both for daily living and survival from invasion, and, strangest of all, hermaphrodite.
Skip's part is told in first person narrative, Eerlen's in close third, which helps the reader shift between their chapters and their worldviews. Hoyt slides almost invisibly between detailed narrative, deep backstory, and summary narrative. There are no pauses or speedbumps, no seams, just flowing story.
And that story braids mystery, danger, culture shock, and more with a strange meeting of magic and technology. Yet some things remain eternal: the way to a king's heart is still through his stomach.
Book One ends in a moment that tears at our hearts, showing how deeply we have come to care about the strange people Hoyt has drawn in the world of Elly.
September 9, 2025
Really good introduction to both of the POV characters. Fascinating world building. Interesting meld of space fantasy and space opera.
January 5, 2026
The first of three volumes. This is not a trilogy of separate stories, but dictated by the limits of modern-day technology.
It gets the story well started, with our two heroes, interweaving two threads.
Skip -- Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson -- survives and battles heroically in space combat where his father dies, and then quits the armed forces to run wild. And later become a diplomat.
Eerlen comes running through the castle because his sworn, the king, has died, his sireling, Brundar, is the king's rightful heir but still a child, and court politics are -- rough. Especially when they learn the king did not die in battle but by murder. And the set-up of this world of hermaphrodites gets revealed bit by bit.
It involves a shelter in deep ice, Skip recognizing someone in an unexpected place, falling out a window onto grass, a lot of baking, hunting, and more.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews