Character-driven adult dystopian science fiction with a central, open-door romance and a vivid science-fantasy atmosphere.
The manuscript that became Death Remedy—then titled Akman’s Angels—was shortlisted for the Andromeda Award in 2024.
About the Book
The dead rule the past. The enemy rules the present. Their love threatens both.
Death Remedy is the first full-length novel in the Akman’s Angels Trilogy, an emotionally immersive dystopian science fiction series about broken people, fractured nations, and hope that refuses to die.
Remedy Ivanov was raised to save a nation.
Nith was created to protect it.
Neither became the hero Kraji expected.
Thirteen years after surrendering to the Eastern Offensive, Kraji remains under occupation—watched by the enemy, bound by ancestral law, and haunted by the dead its people worship.
Revered as the daughter of Kraji’s most honored general, Remedy now lives as a sacred untouchable. She is deprived of the touch of others and forbidden from using her brilliant mind to ease her people’s suffering.
Nith is one of Kraji’s genetically engineered, winged super-soldiers known as Angels. He should have died defending Kraji. Instead, he survived its fall. Disgraced and enslaved by the occupiers, he endures a life of servitude for the sake of the child he is forbidden to see.
Neither Remedy nor Nith dreams of saving their country.
They simply want something the laws of Kraji—and the powers that rule it—do not allow: connection.
But when a chance encounter draws them together, their forbidden bond threatens more than tradition. It exposes the divisions that have kept a conquered people obedient and becomes an act of defiance neither can take back.
In a nation ruled by fear, shame, and decades of carefully preserved lies, their connection could ignite a revolution.
And bring their country back from the dead.
What Kind of Book Is Death Remedy?
Death Remedy is character-driven adult dystopian science fiction with dual protagonists, a central forbidden romance, open-door intimacy, and a science-fantasy atmosphere.
The relationship between Remedy and Nith is essential to both the emotional arc and the political conflict. However, Death Remedy is not structured as a genre romance or romantasy novel. Its love story develops alongside questions of occupation, cultural identity, inherited power, genetic engineering, trauma, and rebellion.
The world may feel fantastical—with ancestral rituals, lost technology, winged warriors, and a civilization shaped by the worship of its dead—but its speculative elements are grounded in science rather than magic.
What to Expect
- A central, forbidden, open-door romance
- Dual points of view
- A brilliant but deeply uncertain female protagonist
- A damaged, genetically engineered hero
- Touch-starved characters
- Forbidden connection
- Complicated family legacies
- Redemption and second chances
- Winged super-soldiers
- Occupation and revolution
- An intricate post-collapse culture
- Moral ambiguity and philosophical questions
- Emotionally devastating moments balanced by hope
- Science fiction with the immersive atmosphere of fantasy
The World of Death Remedy
Two hundred years of war have split Earth into two rival superpowers. Between them lies Kraji, a small conquered nation attempting to preserve its identity after technological collapse and military defeat.
In Kraji, history is not safely confined to the past. The memory of the dead shapes law, social status, family identity, and the choices permitted to the living. Traditions that once protected the culture have hardened into instruments of isolation and control.
The Angels are not supernatural beings. They are the descendants of genetically engineered soldiers created to defend Kraji. With massive wings, inhuman strength, enhanced senses, and bodies designed for combat, they were once revered as the nation’s protectors. After Kraji fell, the survivors became living reminders of defeat.
Against this backdrop, the connection between Remedy and Nith becomes dangerous precisely because it is so human.
Genre and Style
Genre: Adult dystopian science fiction
Subgenres: Character-driven science fiction, biotech science fiction, political science fiction, post-collapse speculative fiction, and romantic science fiction
Romance: A central, established-couple romance with open-door intimacy. The relationship is inseparable from the political story, but the novel is not structured as a conventional genre romance.
Setting: Far-future Earth after two centuries of global conflict. The story centers on the newly liberated nation of Kraji, where political survival, cultural identity, ancestral tradition, and advanced biotechnology collide.
Style: Emotionally direct and psychologically intimate, with visceral prose, dark humor, dense cultural worldbuilding, and high-stakes political conflict grounded in personal choices.
Tone: Gritty, suspenseful, morally complex, romantic, and emotionally intense, with hope earned through difficult change rather than easy victories.
Themes
Death Remedy explores:
- Grief and survival after collective defeat
- Guilt, redemption, and second chances
- The burden of inherited expectations
- Cultural memory and historical truth
- Faith, superstition, and social control
- The difference between reverence and dehumanization
- Identity after failure
- Genetic engineering and manufactured purpose
- Isolation, touch, and emotional intimacy
- The ways human connection can become politically dangerous
- What parts of a damaged culture deserve to be preserved
- Whether hope can survive without truth
Who Should Read Death Remedy?
Read Death Remedy if you are looking for:
- Character-driven science fiction with emotional depth
- Adult dystopian fiction with complex relationships
- Science fiction featuring a complicated female protagonist
- A central romance that supports rather than replaces the larger plot
- Forbidden yearning followed by open-door intimacy
- A damaged hero trying to reclaim his humanity
- Literary-leaning speculative fiction with political tension
- Philosophical science fiction about identity, power, and belonging
- Deep worldbuilding built around culture and history
- Post-collapse societies rather than conventional apocalypse stories
- Books about grief, loneliness, healing, and connection
- Emotionally devastating fiction that still offers hope
- Science fiction that carries the atmosphere and immersion of fantasy
Readers who value relationships over spectacle—but still want rebellion, suspense, dangerous choices, and moments of intense action—will feel at home in Kraji.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Death Remedy dystopian science fiction?
Yes. Death Remedy is adult dystopian science fiction set in an occupied nation governed by oppressive laws, rigid social divisions, and traditions that control personal identity.
However, it does not follow a conventional young adult dystopian structure and those in power are understood to be the enemy. The protagonists are adults carrying long histories of grief, responsibility, parenthood, failure, and survival.
Does Death Remedy have romance?
Yes. The forbidden relationship between Remedy and Nith is central to the story, not a minor subplot. Their need for connection drives their character development and eventually becomes inseparable from Kraji’s political future.
The romance includes open-door intimacy, but the book remains character-driven dystopian science fiction rather than genre romance.
Is Death Remedy romantasy?
No. Readers who enjoy romantasy may connect with its emotional intensity, immersive culture, forbidden relationship, winged hero, and science-fantasy atmosphere. However, the world contains no magic, and the Angels are products of genetic engineering rather than supernatural beings.
Is Death Remedy character-driven or plot-driven?
Death Remedy is strongly character-driven. Its central focus is the emotional development of Remedy and Nith, their evolving relationship, and the choices they make in response to grief, guilt, isolation, and expectation.
The novel also includes political conflict, rebellion, medical tension, violence, and action, but those events grow from the characters rather than replacing their internal journeys.
Is Death Remedy a post-apocalyptic novel?
Not in the conventional sense. There was no single apocalypse that ended civilization. Instead, two centuries of warfare, dwindling resources, and lost technology gradually transformed the world.
The result is a post-collapse future in which remnants of advanced science exist within societies that resemble cultures from the distant past.
Are the Angels actual angels?
No. The Angels are genetically engineered humans whose enhanced bodies include functional wings, immense strength, heightened senses, and other adaptations originally designed for warfare.
The name reflects their role in Kraji’s culture, not a divine or supernatural origin.
Is Death Remedy young adult?
No. Death Remedy is adult science fiction. It features adult protagonists, mature themes, violence, trauma, enslavement, substance abuse, political oppression, and non-explicit open-door sexual content.
What is the reading order for the Akman’s Angels Trilogy?
- Pre Mortem — a free, optional companion prequel set before the fall of Kraji
- Death Remedy — Book One
- Mourning Fire — Book Two
- Life to Death — Book Three
Readers can begin with Death Remedy. Reading Pre Mortem first provides additional history and context but is not required to understand the trilogy.
About S.T. Seitz
S.T. Seitz writes emotionally immersive science fiction about broken people, fractured worlds, and hope that refuses to die.
With a background in biology and a lifelong fascination with living systems—human and otherwise—she creates character-driven speculative fiction that combines big ideas with deeply personal stakes. Her work explores grief, power, identity, moral ambiguity, and the dangerous ways people connect under impossible circumstances.
Her fiction has been recognized by the Launch Pad Prose Competition and the Andromeda Award.
She lives in the foothills of Colorado with her husband, their wildling daughter, and a small menagerie of beasts. When she is not writing, she is usually outside marveling at the planet, worrying about the planet, or observing its creatures with gentle scientific curiosity.
Behind the Akman’s Angels Trilogy
The Akman’s Angels Trilogy was born during one of the most isolating periods of S.T. Seitz’s life. The story grew from questions about how far we will go to escape loneliness. As she built a world and characters around this question, new ones emerged:
What happens after defeat? How do people continue living when the world they believed in has collapsed? When does tradition preserve a culture, and when does it prevent that culture from healing? Can connection between two damaged people become a meaningful act of resistance?
The trilogy explores how love, identity, and hope are rebuilt after everything that once gave them meaning has been lost.
Read Death Remedy
Death Remedy is available as an ebook, in Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback.
Buy Death Remedy on Amazon or Bookshop.org.
Want to test the waters of this world first? Meet Remedy and venture into Kraji before the fall in Pre Mortem, the Akman’s Angels prequel novella, for FREE by joining my newsletter:
Before Remedy Ivanov saved her country, she became the reason it fell.
Thirteen years before Death Remedy, sixteen-year-old Remedy is struggling to become the leader her legendary mother expects her to be.
Remedy can reproduce nearly any skill she sees. She can design machines from scraps, memorize entire libraries, and build a battle plan down to its smallest step. But her mother insists that knowledge is not enough. A true leader must act on instinct—and Remedy has never trusted hers.
Then an enemy army evades Kraji’s defenses and marches on its capital.
With the country’s highest officers dead and its army hundreds of miles away, Remedy is suddenly asked to do the one thing her mother never believed she could: lead. With Kraji’s military absent, she’s left only with a desperate collection of civilians, students, and one young soldier who believes in her more than she believes in herself.
Every choice could save a life. Every hesitation could destroy a nation.
And one decision will leave Remedy carrying unimaginable consequences for the next thirteen years.
Pre Mortem is the complete tragic origin story of Remedy Ivanov and the fall of Kraji. The story continues in Death Remedy, a character-driven adult dystopian science-fiction novel about the forbidden connection between Remedy and Nith, a disgraced genetically engineered winged soldier.
Begin the Akman’s Angels Trilogy here, then read Death Remedy in Kindle Unlimited, ebook, or paperback. And continue the journey in Mourning Fire (book 2, out now) and Life to Death (coming January 26, 2027).