Her short work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Lone Star Stories, Weird Tales, and. Vashti is a troubled, fascinating protagonist whose story ends on a cliffhanger, with greater battles for the fate of Ubastis and her own family yet to come. Her first novel, Archangel, won the 2016 Philip K Dick Special Citation. Reed is a skilled storyteller and the world of Ubastis is a vivid creation, with a Muslim culture that is simply part of the overall setting rather than a driver of the plot. Archangel The Earth is dying, and our hopes are pinned on Ubastis, an untamed paradise at the edge of colonized space. As Vashti considers her role in the coming conflict, she confronts the wounds of her past through uncomfortable interactions with a bioengineered super-soldier similar to the one who murdered her husband. Tensions are rising between those who would protect Ubastis against further colonization and those who want to open it up to widespread settlement. Archangel by Marguerite Reed available in Trade Paperback on, also read synopsis and reviews. Vashti Loren-hunter, naturalist, mother, and the widow of a revered explorer-is a settler on Ubastis, a fertile, lush world where settlement has been intensely restricted to prevent the environmental collapse that ruined Earth and its other colonies. Her novel Archangel ( 2015 ), first in the intended series The Chronicles of Ubastis, centres on a human research colony (see Colonization of Other Worlds) of Scientists on the remote planet Ubastis, which because Earth is succumbing to Pollution is being assessed as a new home-world for humanity. This series launch hits the sweet spot with a truly alien setting, a well-developed future culture, and a thoughtful, talented heroine.