Swallowed by darkness

Employing a contemporary setting and a futuristic one, the novel tells the chilling stories of authoritarian regimes and how they darken the lives of ordinary citizens. united states president kirsten blackwood has imposed martial law, which triggers a resistance movement among ordinary citizens who seek to regain their voice and rights. the novel then pivots to a time hundreds of years in the future when a wealthy business titan has established a corporate confederation of four planets in a distant solar system as a refuge from earth, where decades of depopulation and climate change have devastated economies and resulted in the dissolution of the united states into independent regional republics. most citizens are illiterate and have seeded control to a small aristocracy. there are just a few pockets of educated people, who try to preserve the knowledge in books from past generations. this novel is a cautionary tale about the dangers of letting democracy wither.