the Siege of Burning Grass: Shortlisted for 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize Fiction

Antiwar activist Alefret, locked up in a secret prison and tortured, is offered a chance of freedom, ordered into one of the enemy’s flying cities to provoke his fellow pacifists into rising against their rulers. He should refuse to serve the warmongers, but what if he could end this pointless war once and for all? The Empires of Varkal and Med’ariz have always been at war. Alefret, the founder of Varkal’s pacifist resistance, was bombed and maimed by his own government, locked up in a secret prison and tortured by a ‘visionary’ scientist. But now they’re offering him a chance of freedom. Ordered to infiltrate one of Med’ariz’s flying cities, obeying the bloodthirsty zealot Qhudur, he must find fellow anti-war activists in the enemy’s population and provoke them into an uprising against their rulers. He should refuse to serve the warmongers, but what if he could end this pointless war once and for all? Is that worth compromising his own morals and the principles of his fellow resistance members?