The Silver Sahara

by Miner, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9798992993905
• ISBN10: 8992993900
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-09-19
• Publisher: BookBaby
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Summary

It has been nearly twenty years since the end of the Chrome War. The century-long conflict left the world in ruins, limping along a fragile road to recovery. Tattered governments and towering megacorporations now divide the wounded Earth between them. Crime festers. Outlaws return to the only way of life they've ever known. Even under the "protection" of mercenary giants like Kranos Incorporated, peace remains a distant dream. In this broken world, survival is no different than it was during the war.
Amid the newly terraformed West Saharan Steppe, 21-year-old wayfinder Jay Harlow scrapes together a living with his aging Uncle and adopted sister, Kiera. Uncle, once a legendary war vet and wayfinder himself, is too old to keep up—but Jay has plans. Big ones. With charm, grit, and reckless ambition, he's preparing for a heist that could change everything: enough credits to buy safety, freedom, and a place in history.
On a job in the neon tourist sprawl of New Marrakesh, Jay crosses paths with Richard Willon, an overly enthusiastic outsider with deep pockets and bigger dreams. The bastard son of a wealthy technocrat, Richard wants to live like the old-world cowboys he read about in books. Jay, sensing an opportunity, reluctantly agrees to show him the frontier. Neither realizes how far this deal will carry them—or what it will cost.
Meanwhile, a deadly assassin begins to question everything she's ever known. Raised inside the walls of Kranos Incorporated, she's been forged into a weapon—efficient, obedient, inhuman. But with every mission, her armor cracks. As her path converges with Jay's, something stirs: a flicker of connection, the possibility of something more than survival.
Silver Sahara is a soulful, character-driven cyberpunk western—a tale of outlaws, corporate killers, and forgotten lands where the future is still up for grabs. Brutal, tender, and rich with philosophy, it asks what it means to find your place in a world built to keep you lost.

"It's a masterpiece... an adrenaline rush of high literary tact and unprecedented subtlety..."

"Familiar in the sense that your characters are timeless--utterly timeless! That is the word I keep coming back to that I felt echoing in my mind while reading..."

Author Biography

Born and raised in Southern California, I've always had a deep love for storytelling. For as long as I can remember, I was playing pretend with anything I could get my hands on—making up recurring characters and plotlines just to make whatever I was doing feel more awesome.

As I got older, I became captivated by world history and science fiction—especially Star Wars and early cyberpunk works, like one of my favorite books, Neuromancer by William Gibson. But when I boiled down what really drew me in, I realized it was the introspection behind it all. In history, you get these sweeping arcs of empires rising and falling, religions and ideologies beginning and ending—but at the heart of those arcs are individual people, people who rarely ever got to see the story's end. Cyberpunk, in its way, captures that same feeling: a grim and soulful look into futures shaped by forgotten lives. That's what I'm drawn to. Stories feel most meaningful when the character has a place in them.

When I was 18, I began writing a time-travel thriller about a young man named Kaid, who was trying to escape his own foretold death by endlessly traveling to different time periods. The trilogy I planned would've followed three major arcs, each centered around someone Kaid was trying to help—each one teaching him something about life and death. I never finished the second book. The first, written in all my early naivety, was passed on by agents who said time travel stories were too saturated to sell. I shelved it, hoping to return one day.

Still, that first book taught me a lot. Its central figure was Napoleon Bonaparte II—an almost unknown historical person, the actual biological son of the Napoleon. His short life was a story of what could've been. He was raised among Austrian aristocracy—his grandfather was Emperor of the former Holy Roman Empire, which Napoleon had dismantled. Some said he had a talent for statecraft, even a hint of his father's strategic mind, but international politics barred him from ever trying. He died at 21 of illness. His story struck me—because I, and so many people I know, grew up with that same feeling: full of potential, but restrained. Held back by a world that seems eager to smother what you love before it takes shape.

That, to me, is the point of writing. I often think of Dostoevsky—not just the man struggling to survive off his work, but the philosopher who used fiction as conversation. I hope to follow that path. Not just to make a living through writing, but because it's how I speak to others. It's how I express what I can't say aloud. Writing isn't my escape because I'm voiceless or lonely. I write to put something out there and hope someone reads it—and if I've done it right, they won't just read the words. They'll feel the hands that wrote them.