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Head On

John Scalzi

2018328 pagesabout 5–8 hours
2018
first published
  • 2018Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom · 336 pages · ENGISBN 9781509835102
  • 2018Thorndike Press · 429 pages · ENGISBN 9781432853235
  • 2019Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom · 336 pages · ENGISBN 9781250385529
  • 2018Tor Books · 328 pagesISBN 9780765388926
  • 2018Audible Studios on BrillianceISBN 9781721372973
  • 2019Tor Science Fiction · 336 pagesISBN 9780765388933
  • 2018Tor Books · 335 pages · ENGISBN 9780765388919
  • 2018Tor BooksISBN 9781250188922

Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent's head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are "threeps," robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden's Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it.Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.Is it an accident or murder? FBI Agents and Haden-related crime investigators, Chris Shane and Leslie Vann, are called in to uncover the truth--and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost, and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.

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