{"id":11190,"date":"2026-08-08T00:03:06","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T05:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/?p=11190"},"modified":"2026-07-30T11:23:58","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T16:23:58","slug":"novelist-laura-montgomery-hails-pierces-a-kiss-for-damocles-as-an-awesome-prometheus-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/novelist-laura-montgomery-hails-pierces-a-kiss-for-damocles-as-an-awesome-prometheus-winner\/","title":{"rendered":"Novelist Laura Montgomery hails Pierce\u2019s A Kiss for Damocles as an \u201cawesome\u201d Prometheus winner\u2028"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael Grossberg<\/b><\/p>\n

J. Kenton Pierce\u2019s A Kiss for Damocles,<\/i> the 2026 Prometheus Best Novel winner, is receiving rave reviews. Even from novelists whose works Pierce beat to win his first Prometheus award.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The latest raves<\/a> come from Laura Montgomery, herself nominated in 2026 for Planting Life: Shut the Kingdom.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cI read Damocles <\/i>to vote on and absolutely\u00a0loved it.\u00a0 \u00a0I’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,\u201d Montgomery wrote on her website.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone is recommending A\u00a0Kiss for Damocles, <\/i>and you should definitely read it.\u00a0 It’s awesome and just won the Prometheus.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\"\"<\/a>THE WARLORD OF GREENLINE TOWN<\/b><\/p>\n

Montgomery offers similar high praise for The Warlord of Greenline Town, <\/i>which \u201cshowcases his talents just as strongly.\u201d Book Two in Pierce\u2019s future series was recently nominated for next year\u2019s Prometheus award.<\/p>\n

\u201cWow. Just wow. The\u00a0Warlord of Greenline Town<\/i> is every bit as good as A\u00a0Kiss for Damocles. <\/i>(Ok, it’s not technically book two because it follows a different person overlapping with some of the same events of book one.\u00a0 I hope that’s clear.)\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Laura Montgomery (Creative Commons license)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

IMPRESSIVE WORLD-BUILDING<\/b><\/p>\n

Montgomery writes that she is especially impressed by Pierce\u2019s world-building.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe series is\u00a0set 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\u00a0there is nonetheless\u00a0lots of exotic weaponry, biogas, hydroponics (to get through the winters), and plenty else,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vibe is great, too.\u00a0\u00a0The history of the fall of Terra, the small band of survivors, humanity’s battleships that held the line, all\u00a0suffuse the novels with a sense of lost and ancient glory,\u201d Montgomery writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cHeroes fall in desperate battle.\u00a0Yet Pierce also portrays with a sure hand the grimy, gritty reality of the present and of\u00a0living underground. The balance he achieves is striking, and the harshness of mankind’s\u00a0current reality accentuates with gusto\u00a0the moments of heroism and glory.\u201d<\/p>\n

A LOVE OF COLONIZATION STORIES
\n<\/b>
\nOne reason Montgomery likes both of the first two novels in Pierce\u2019s projected multi-volume and two-track Tales of the Long Night series is her \u201cthing\u201d for colonization stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cWarlord <\/i>follows a cop on a colony world cut off from the rest of humanity as she deals with a time of great\u00a0transition. The long winter of a super volcano triggered by an enemy\u2019s orbital bombardment begins to abate. We see folks from A Kiss for Damocles<\/em>, but the events are different when seen through other’s eyes,” she writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I need to gush. In Warlord, <\/i>Ravati Aziz is a great heroine\u2014fundamentally a good person, and\u00a0appropriately 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,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

Montgomery\u2019s conclusion?<\/p>\n

\u201cGo check out Tales of the Long Night,\u201d she said.
\n\u201cThese books are worthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>FOR FURTHER READING<\/b><\/p>\n

Montgomery was nominated for a 2026 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Planting Life: Shut the Kingdom. <\/i>Her website is lauramontgomery.com<\/a> and she writes about \u201cthe real-life space law issues touched upon in some of my books\u201d at groundbasedspacematters.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Read the Prometheus Blog review by LFS President William H. Stoddard of A Kiss for Damocles<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ABOUT THE LFS AND THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS<\/b><\/p>\n

*\u00a0Join us!<\/b> To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, \u00a0join<\/a> the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer international association of freedom-loving sf\/fantasy fans.<\/p>\n

Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other\u2019s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.<\/p>\n

* Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/b>For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees \u2013 including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards \u2013 visit the enhanced \u00a0Prometheus Awards page<\/a>\u00a0on the LFS website. This page includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of the 106 works that have won a Prometheus since 1979 fits the awards\u2019 distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog\u2019s\u00a0Video page.<\/a><\/p>\n

* Read \u201cThe Libertarian History of Science Fiction,\u201d<\/a> an essay in the international magazine\u00a0Quillette<\/i>\u00a0that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf\/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.<\/p>\n

* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society\u2019s Facebook page<\/a> for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Grossberg J. Kenton Pierce\u2019s 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. \u201cI read Damocles to vote … Continue reading Novelist Laura Montgomery hails Pierce\u2019s A Kiss for Damocles as an \u201cawesome\u201d Prometheus winner\u2028<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2353,8],"tags":[2774,1657,2773,2771,2893],"class_list":["post-11190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-review","tag-a-kiss-for-damocles","tag-best-novel-winner","tag-j-kenton-pierce","tag-laura-montgomery","tag-the-warlord-of-greenline-town"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-2Uu","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11190"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11198,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11190\/revisions\/11198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}