Spotlight on Indie
Cover of Jiao Tu’s Endeavour: Episode 1: The Kidnapped Mousling
Want to Read

Sign in to build your shelf

Get the book

Jiao Tu’s Endeavour · Book 1

Jiao Tu’s Endeavour: Episode 1: The Kidnapped Mousling

by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt

On a multigenerational colony ship five hundred years off course, a lagomorph warrior must survive using only his wits and his sword.

Jiao Tu has been hired to rescue a young kidnapped mousling. A tip leads him to the Below, home to the engines that keep the world in motion. His mission has hardly begun when an encounter with a monstrous being plunges him into the midst of a struggle not only for control of the Below but for the world itself.

Teamed with an untested ratling warrior and the ratling leader of a gang of thugs, Jiao Tu must stop the monster and save the mousling—and the world—before it is too late.

Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Leigh Brackett’s planetary romances, Gene Wolfe’s Book of the Long Sun, Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane stories, Hideyuki Kikuchi’s Vampire Hunter D, Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo, and the wuxia tradition starting with Water Margins and Journey to the West, Uitvlugt has created a world all his own that promises a far-future adventure unlike any other.

This volume contains the complete first story arc compiled from the web serial Jiao Tu’s Endeavour, as well as the bonus stories “The Festival of Sweets” and “The Last Oracle.” Read more about the lagomorph warrior and his adventures at https://jiaotusendeavour.wordpress.com/.

Type
Novel
Published
Sep 2025
Language
EN

Content rating

Author-supplied. Hover a meter for the rubric.

Language
Not rated

Not rated

Violence
Not rated

Not rated

Romance / Sex
Not rated

Not rated

Biblical Themes
Not rated

Not rated

Reader reviews

Share your thoughts

Sign in to rate this book and write a review.

Sign in to review
5.0
1 review
5
1
4
0
3
0
2
0
1
0
S

Sarah Pierzchala

Jun 30, 2026

Ebook

Imaginative, vivid and entertaining

This collection contains one novella and two other complete related space-opera tales. It chronicles the exploits of genetically engineered, intelligent animals who inhabit a vast interstellar ship, large enough to be a de facto planet. The population of this ship has been traveling so long that the reason for its journey and the identity of those who created the entire edifice and its citizens have long been forgotten. The stories are well-paced, the action scenes just the right length, and the prose is crisp and streamlined. Overall, I was thoroughly engrossed in this little book. With such an ambitious setting, I think there is plenty of room for even more world-building, but what's here certainly provides a rich, imaginative field to show off the characters' dilemmas, characters that are nicely fleshed out and relatable

No reviews for this format yet.

Discussion

Start a discussion

No discussions about this book yet. Start the first one.

Readers also enjoyed