For reviewers, bloggers and features
Pantheon · press kit
Everything here is free to quote, copy and republish. Nothing on this page spoils the book beyond its first act. If you need something that is not here, ask.
At a glance
- Title
- Pantheon
- Author
- Lacunae
- Series
- Pantheon, book one of three. It stands alone.
- Genre
- Romantic conspiracy thriller. Romantic suspense on a retailer shelf.
- Published
- 2 October 2026, self-published
- Format
- Kindle ebook, included with Kindle Unlimited from release day. No print edition yet: paperbacks are planned once the trilogy is close to finished, with covers commissioned from a professional artist as one series, replacing the generated covers on the ebooks as well.
- Length
- 164,164 words · 63 chapters · about 578 pages
- Price
- USD 4.99
- ASIN
- B0HG2T4G3P
- Audience
- Adult. Explicit sexual content and graphic violence.
- Comparable to
- Red Sparrow, First Lie Wins, The Night Manager
- Review copies
- EPUB or PDF, whichever you prefer. Ask and it is sent the same day.
Read it before you commit
The first seven chapters are on this site, free, with no signup and nothing to claim. It is roughly an hour of reading, and it is the honest way to decide whether the book is for you or for your readers.
Description, short
For five years the woman running Praya Capital has been Vivienne Ho: a face fixed by hand before seven each morning, a life built so completely it became real to the woman wearing it. Then Damien Tang loses a container terminal to her, wants her by the weekend, and opens a file. What her craft cannot survive is being looked at properly, by somebody who is not going to stop.
Description, full
Vivienne Ho has run Praya Capital for five years: no press, two photographs on the fund's own site, both of the other founder. Vivienne Ho is a face Circe fixes by hand before seven each morning, and a life that became real to the woman wearing it.
Circe has spent six years being nobody in particular. By the end of the season a house in Geneva has published half a billion dollars for her body.
Damien Tang loses a container terminal to her on a Thursday and wants her by the weekend. His family opens a file, and he lets it run. The man who loves her has money, no training, and no idea what he is buying.
Circe can wear any face in the world. What her craft cannot survive is being looked at properly, at close range, by somebody who is not going to stop.
He is not going to stop.
A romantic conspiracy thriller for readers of Red Sparrow, First Lie Wins and The Night Manager. Romance and conspiracy carry equal weight, and both are explicit on the page. Book one of a trilogy; it stands alone.
Contains explicit sexual content and graphic violence. Intended for adult readers.
Content warnings
Stated plainly and without euphemism, because a warning a reader has to decode has failed at its only job.
- Explicit sex on the page.
- The protagonist shoots and kills people on the page, including in a crowded market. She worked as a contract killer, and the book never lets her off one particular killing.
- A named character dies by suicide, by hanging.
- A character is shut into a low-oxygen room and suffocates.
- Exhumation, with the protagonist handling human remains herself.
- Lasting injury. Grief and estrangement.
- The man courting the protagonist has her identity investigated without her consent. The book treats it as the harm it is. He is charged for it, and it is never eroticised.
- No sexual violence. No on-page harm to children. No sexualised violence.
Cover
Free to use in any review, feature or post about the book.
Served here at 1023 px, which is more than most posts need. A print-resolution file is available on request.
Social images
Ready to post, in the two shapes a feature usually needs. Free to use, the same as the cover.
- Square, 1080 × 1080 Instagram, Facebook, a blog sidebar.
- Banner, 1200 × 630 A post header, or a link preview on X and Facebook.
No credit is needed. If you would like a different size or shape, ask and I will cut it.
About the author
Lacunae writes love stories about people who are very good at dangerous work. She likes them best at the point where being good at it stops being enough.
She writes in two shapes. Pantheon is a romantic conspiracy thriller, the first of three, about a woman who has spent five years making sure nobody can see her properly and the man who will not stop looking. Perpetūra is five interconnected stories across five centuries, published as two books and also readable free as an interactive novel.
Both are self-published, and both are written in the evenings around a full-time job.
Everything, including a journal about how the books actually get made, is at lacunaedesigns.com.
How the book was made
The drafting is AI-assisted, and it is disclosed everywhere rather than on request. The story and the initial prose are mine: the route, and the lines the scenes turn on, are written down before any drafting. Every chapter carries passages I wrote by hand, and every chapter is edited and revised by me. The cover and the character portraits are AI-generated, made from descriptions written first and finished in Photoshop. If any of that matters to your desk, it is better that you know it now than after you have read the book. The process is set out in the colophon, and in full in the studio’s statement, On AI.