Ascent of Angels

By: Shawn Whitney

Narrated by: Adriel Brandt

When Simon Bonaventure breaks the law on his seventeenth birthday, he expects to pay the price.

He doesn't expect his father to pay it instead.

Sentenced in his place. Executed in front of him.

But his father's sacrifice bought him one concession: instead of execution, Simon could enter the Ascent of Angels — a gladiatorial tournament aboard the Exsta, a ring-shaped space station where seven teams fight through seven brutal ecosystems for the right to join the ruling class. Except for his team: The Fallen. In 200 hundred years, no team from the Fallen — criminals, outcasts, the condemned — has ever come close.

They're not there to compete. They're there as a warning.

Simon's team doesn't have the training, the connections, or the protection to win. They are six strangers brought from six enemy sections of the ship, raised to hate each other.

Round by round, the elite teams cheat. The ship's rulers rigs the game. And somewhere beneath the spectacle, a two-hundred-year-old secret is surfacing. The only thing nobody accounted for: enemies who overcome their hatred and start becoming family.

Perfect for fans of The Hunger Games and Red Rising, this dystopian sci-fi thriller delivers brutal competition, class warfare, a found family worth dying for, and one boy’s fight against impossible odds.

The Fallen have risen. The real game is just beginning

©2025 Shawn Whitney (P)2026 Shawn Whitney

Unexpected but enjoyable

Fast paced sci-fi. Elements of Hunger Games but in space. Good world building. This seems to be a standalone but would love to see the story continue. There is more here.

Very OK

if you liked The Hunger Games but wanted an OK version this is it. Main character is OK, world building is good.

A complete experience

I was at home in the theater of my mind as the story of a farm boy's simple life was turned upside down when his actions to save his friends sealed his fate. A thrilling adventure through a variety of environments with drastically different living conditions and inhabitants including a secret group of rebels with a veiled history. I already want more! I'm completely satisfied with the first in the series!

Hunger Games in a Spaceship

Halfway decent story, good narrator, but gave up originality to blatantly become Hunger Games on a Spaceship, it became very formulaic, predictable, and sadly forgettable. I wanted to like it more that I did.