By Michael Grossberg
J. Kenton Pierce’s A Kiss for Damocles, the 2026 Prometheus Best Novel winner, is receiving rave reviews. Even from novelists whose works Pierce beat to win his first Prometheus award.
The latest raves come from Laura Montgomery, herself nominated in 2026 for Planting Life: Shut the Kingdom.
“I read Damocles to vote on and absolutely loved it. I’m now closing on the end of the third book in the (Tales of the Long Night) series and will clearly have to figure out where these rumored short stories can be found,” Montgomery wrote on her website.
“Everyone is recommending A Kiss for Damocles, and you should definitely read it. It’s awesome and just won the Prometheus.”
THE WARLORD OF GREENLINE TOWN
Montgomery offers similar high praise for The Warlord of Greenline Town, which “showcases his talents just as strongly.” Book Two in Pierce’s future series was recently nominated for next year’s Prometheus award.
“Wow. Just wow. The Warlord of Greenline Town is every bit as good as A Kiss for Damocles. (Ok, it’s not technically book two because it follows a different person overlapping with some of the same events of book one. I hope that’s clear.)”
IMPRESSIVE WORLD-BUILDING
Montgomery writes that she is especially impressed by Pierce’s world-building.
“The series is set on a tech-throttled world where an orbiting platform obliterates anyone who uses detectable modern technologies. Living underground provides some ability to work around this problem, and there is nonetheless lots of exotic weaponry, biogas, hydroponics (to get through the winters), and plenty else,” she writes.
“The vibe is great, too. The history of the fall of Terra, the small band of survivors, humanity’s battleships that held the line, all suffuse the novels with a sense of lost and ancient glory,” Montgomery writes.
“Heroes fall in desperate battle. Yet Pierce also portrays with a sure hand the grimy, gritty reality of the present and of living underground. The balance he achieves is striking, and the harshness of mankind’s current reality accentuates with gusto the moments of heroism and glory.”
A LOVE OF COLONIZATION STORIES
One reason Montgomery likes both of the first two novels in Pierce’s projected multi-volume and two-track Tales of the Long Night series is her “thing” for colonization stories.
“Warlord follows a cop on a colony world cut off from the rest of humanity as she deals with a time of great transition. The long winter of a super volcano triggered by an enemy’s orbital bombardment begins to abate. We see folks from A Kiss for Damocles, but the events are different when seen through other’s eyes,” she writes.
“But I need to gush. In Warlord, Ravati Aziz is a great heroine—fundamentally a good person, and appropriately beset and beleaguered at every turn. But the reality of all the other characters, the depth of the world building, and the intricacy of the plot, are all what give this story its richness and depth,” she writes.
Montgomery’s conclusion?
“Go check out Tales of the Long Night,” she said.
“These books are worthy.”
FOR FURTHER READING
Montgomery was nominated for a 2026 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Planting Life: Shut the Kingdom. Her website is lauramontgomery.com and she writes about “the real-life space law issues touched upon in some of my books” at groundbasedspacematters.com
Read the Prometheus Blog review by LFS President William H. Stoddard of A Kiss for Damocles.
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