The Waning Age by S. E. Grove invites you to explore a world where losing your ability to feel emotion is a natural part of growing up. Check out our exclusive cover reveal and excerpt now!

We’ve all experienced moments where we wish our emotions didn’t get the best of us. But a world without emotions? What would that even look like? S. E. Grove’s latest novel, The Waning Age answers those questions through one girl’s attempt to save her brother.

About ‘The Waning Age’

In a parallel present San Francisco, Natalia Peña works as a hotel maid, practices martial arts, and cares for her eleven-year-old brother, Calvino. In this version of our world, all children start to “wane” when they reach Cal’s age; by their teen years, they’ve lost their ability to feel emotion. But Cal isn’t waning. When a mysterious corporation kidnaps him for testing, Natalia’s reaction surprises her: she’s crushed, and she’ll do anything to save her brother from their experiments.

But the road to his rescue leads her into the path of a dashing but troubled billionaire’s son, a cadre of killers, and, eventually, the shocking truth about waning. Filled with twists and turns, The Waning Age is a powerful mirror that shows us the danger of becoming desensitized to violence and the remarkable, transformative power of love.

Check out the first-look at ‘The Waning Age’ cover!

The look of determination on our heroine’s face is plays nicely against the rest of the cover fading away into the beige nothing-ness the summary warns readers about. Natalie’s “surprise” reaction to feeling anything about her brother’s kidnapping is the spark of revolution that I hope the novel ignites into a flame against the underlying evil plaguing this dystopian world.

Want a bit more?

Read on for an exclusive excerpt from The Waning Age.

Exclusive excerpt: ‘The Waning Age’

Until three p.m. I washed sheets, I made beds with perfect corners, I picked up and threw out all manner of indescribable discarded things on bathroom floors, I scrubbed toilets and sinks and tubs, I rearranged flowers, and I kept my nose down. Just like I do every day. Then I said my good-byes to Marta and the other cleaners and walked three blocks to the BART, avoiding a pair of hopped-up crazies who were fight¬ing on the corner of Mission Street over the carcass of a cat. Two men, their faces wild, stretched into contortions of rage and terror. From six feet away, I could smell the mildew and urine and the lingering cloud of fear they’d taken—bitter, sharp, rancid. As I passed them, two cops moved in, taking them apart with no more trouble than trash collectors toss¬ing bags in a truck.

Fear is cheap. The Landmark crowd can buy better, though it amazes me how often they slum it. But for most people, fear is all they can afford. I get it: sometimes it’s better to feel something, even something bad, rather than nothing at all. It’s supposed to feel like a nervous flutter, a thickening of the senses, a thrum of anxious anticipation. It’s supposed to feel a little scary and a little exciting. It’s sup¬posed to feel familiar.

I’ve tried it a couple times. The first time, I saw a six-foot spider eating the contents of the refrigerator, and the second time, I was convinced that Cal—kid brother, almost eleven—had fallen from the upper-story window. There was no third time. When the drops are good, they’re not supposed to make you afraid of made-up things, but, obviously, the drops I could afford were not good.

When Mom was alive she used to buy us some good times on birthdays. Seven hundred dollars an ounce, last I checked. At the back of the medicine chest she saved some top-quality peace of mind for emergencies (five hundred an ounce). But that’s all gone now, along with her. Maybe nothing’s changed. Happiness and tranquility weren’t cheap five hundred years ago either. Bought with the blood and sweat of serfs, with the bondage of entire peoples, with the darkness of mines and the poison of mercury. Different form of payment now, same high cost. And what do you know, orphanhood doesn’t make them any cheaper. As my pal Raymond Chandler says, “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.” An accurate misuse of the line, since Mom’s death did pretty much sink my chances of feeling anything. I couldn’t even afford to be glum for the funeral.

Not that I’m complaining. That’s how 99 percent of humanity lives. But the other 1 percent? They can afford to feel whatever they like.

As I waited for the train to Oakland, I stared at one of the ten-by-ten-foot screen decals on the BART platform. The screens stand at forty-five-degree angles to the rails every twenty feet and play an eight-second clip on a loop. First a beautiful house, coming closer until you’re on the doorstep. The door opens. A beautiful blonde woman. For just a moment, long enough for you to imagine incorrectly that you and she have something in common, her face is blank. Then, suddenly, she’s gasping with surprise. A moment later, sad¬ness. The bittersweet kind, with tears running down her face as she tries to smile. Maybe you’re the husband she thought was dead. Maybe you’re a long-lost sister. Maybe you’re her favorite child. She’s wiping away tears, and the joy is overtaking her face until she’s smiling, beaming, laughing. Then the words appear just below her chin. White italics: Real Feeling. The Real fades, only to reappear on the other side: Feeling Real. I’ve seen the RealCorp ad a thousand times, and I still can’t look away. Nor could any of the other suckers, by the looks of it. We all stood there crammed together, staring at the beautiful face of the 1 percent go through the costly cascade of emotions over and over again until the train arrived.

I got a seat and let my back sink into the flattened cushions. Even soiled upholstery feels good when you’ve been on your feet for eight hours. The woman next to me, eyes sleepy, was reading headlines on her decal about an earthquake and a deployment of Marines. Nothing new there. In front of us, a pack of girls, likely third-graders, huddled together around a pole, giggling, eyes darting, clothes sparkling, smelling of strawberry shampoo and gum. I let myself watch them, the way their laughter moved through them like an electric cur¬rent, making even the quiet one who clung too tight to the pole drop her guard and light up.

That’s what real emotion looks like.

That’s how Cal laughs. He’s jolted. It’s involuntary and inelegant, like sneezing.

With Mom gone, it’s Cal who keeps us afloat. I might be the one who pays the bills, but he’s the only one who gives us a reason to. He still feels everything—I mean everything. It’s constant fireworks with Cal: one minute he’s wailing the whole building down, and the next he’s laughing so hard he might puke. I love him to death. And before you say I can’t really love him because love is beyond unaffordable, let me tell you that I do, and I’m not going to belabor it or fight you on it. I just do. I can’t explain why. But I know I do because when I think of a world without Cal, it is an entirely point¬less world.

He’s almost eleven, so the fading should start any day now. He’s overdue. But he hasn’t started waning at all. If any¬thing, it seems as though he’s feeling more than ever. Almost all of his classmates are looking the way I did at that age, dull and kind of mystified, like they can’t figure out who stole all the Halloween candy. Lo siento, kids—it’s gone. Gone for good. And unless your parents can afford top-shelf synaffs, which in our neighborhood no one can, it’s not coming back.
Every day I tell myself, “It could start today, so prepare yourself.” Then Cal blows up because of some story on the radio about children working in a rug factory or comes home mooning over the most beautiful old Ford and I think, “Okay. Not today. But it could start tomorrow.” Each time I’m glad—glad in the way you don’t pay for, where it’s not a high but you have the satisfaction of seeing a plus sign appear in the right column of your brain.

Except for when that plus sign gets converted into a big, big minus.

I didn’t see it coming.

—

S. E. Grove (segrovebooks.com) is a New York Times bestselling author, historian, and world traveler. She spends most of her time reading about the early modern Spanish empire, writing about invented empires, and residing in Boston. Follow S. E. Grove on Twitter @segrovebooks.

The Waning Age by S. E. Grove hits store shelves on February 5, 2019. In the meantime, you can pre-order it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, or add it to your Goodreads list.