The Man in the High Castle meets Pacific Rim in this action-packed alternate history novel from the award-winning author of United States of Japan . Germany and Japan won WWII and control the U.S., and a young man has one dream: to become a mecha pilot. Makoto Fujimoto grew up in California, but with a difference--his California is part of the United States of Japan. After Germany and Japan won WWII, the United States fell under their control. Growing up in this world, Mac plays portical games, haphazardly studies for the Imperial Exam, and dreams of becoming a mecha pilot. Only problem: Mac's grades are terrible. His only hope is to pass the military exam and get into the prestigious mecha pilot training program at Berkeley Military Academy. When his friend Hideki's plan to game the test goes horribly wrong, Mac washes out of the military exam too. Perhaps he can achieve his dream by becoming a civilian pilot. But with tensions rising between the United States of Japan and Nazi Germany and rumors of collaborators and traitors abounding, Mac will have to stay alive long enough first... Praise for Mecha Samurai Empire “Intermixing the experience of cinema, literature, anime, comics, and gaming, this is the new generation of Science Fiction we've been waiting for!”—Hideo Kojima, Game Creator “The characters are truly compelling and the world Tieryas created is a joy to discover. And if you come for the giant robots, Mecha Samurai Empire has all kinds and the best robot combat you’ll ever read. Seriously, this is a whole new kind of badass.”—Sylvain Neuvel, author of Sleeping Giants “Fascinating and entertaining....I caught myself thinking about the book long after I read it.”—Taylor Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of the Destroyermen series “A spectacular and thought-provoking rollercoaster ride.”—August Cole, Co-Author of Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War “Extremely fun, intriguing, thrilling, and well written; Mecha Samurai Empire is a one of a kind story that will entice the imagination of any and all who read it.”—Geek Nerd Net “Tieryas perfectly balances humor, action, and romance.”— Publishers Weekly “Readers will find themselves caught up in Tieryas' thought-provoking world.”— Booklist Praise for Peter Tieryas and United States of Japan   “A searing vision of the persistence of hope in the face of brutality, United States of Japan is utterly brilliant.”—Ken Liu, Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy winner and author of The Grace of Kings   “A perfect patchwork of multiple sci-fi and anime subgenres rolled into one novel.”— Esquire   “This is a darkly fun, clever, and unrelentingly ambitious book.”—Kameron Hurley, Hugo Award-winner and author of The Mirror Empire Peter Tieryas is the award-winning internationally best-selling writer of the Mecha Samurai Empire series (Penguin Random House), which has received praise from places like the Financial Times, Amazon, Verge, Gizmodo, Wired, and more. The series has been translated into multiple foreign languages, won two Seiun Awards, and the Mandarin version was one of the Douban's Top 10 Science Fiction Books of 2018. He's had hundreds of publications from places like New Letters, Subaru, ZYZZYVA, Indiana Review, and more. His game essays have been published at sites like IGN, Kotaku, and Entropy. He was also a technical writer for Lucasfilm I don't know why people say time heals all wounds. Time only aggravates mine. My maternal grandparents were Japanese citizens who lived in Kyoto and immigrated to San Francisco during the early 1900s. My paternal grandparents were ethnic Koreans who moved to Los Angeles shortly after the Empire's victory in 1948. There were more opportunities in the United States of Japan then, especially since the Empire was rebuilding so many of the cities that were in ruins. My parents met during the 1974 Matsuri, a festival at a Shinto shrine in Irvine. My father served as a mecha technician and worked on the maintenance of their armor plating. My mother was an officer who worked as a navigator aboard the mecha Kamoshika . She recognized my dad at the shrine for the work he did on their BP generator. They each picked out an o-mikuji from the o-mikuji box, wondering what fortunes those little strips of paper foretold. By pure coincidence, both of their messages read that a momentous event would occur that day and alter their destinies forever. After sharing jokes and chiding each other about destiny and politics in the corps, they agreed to go to their favorite ramen shop for dinner. I was born two years later. My earliest memory with them is at a mecha factory in Long Beach. The armored legs were bigger than most buildings I'd seen. By the time I was three, I was waging wars against the Nazis with mecha toys my dad had built for me. He'd made me a special jimbaori , and I loved the way the old samurai surcoats gave my mechanical warriors a regal bearing