SETH W. JAMES

New Novel Release, “An Uncalculated Risk” by Seth W. James, Book 3 of “The Cain Series”

May 1, 2025

By Seth W. James

An Uncalculated Risk, book 3 in The Cain Series, is available now in ebook, trade paperback, and hardcover formats.  An episodic, near-future, cyberpunk science fiction novel—like all Cain Series’ novels—An Uncalculated Risk follows Cain and Francesca as they investigate a mercenary invasion in South America.  From a trail of suspicious clues on the streets of La Paz, to infiltrating enemy lines in the Bolivian Rainforest, and then up to a free-port orbital—where the only law is “don’t get caught”—Cain and Francesca struggle to separate the lies they are meant to find from the lies leading them into a trap.  The true danger, however, only becomes clear when they uncover the trillionaire behind it all.

Cover art and back-cover copy:

“In the fusion age, war for commerce had become a commonplace.  But when an unusually well-financed mercenary force seized the Alto Madidi mining complex in the Bolivian Andes, they set off a cascade of events that brought the global tin market to its knees—and threatened Francesca Pieralisi’s seawall project.  Tin was indispensable to the manufacture of construction exoskeletons, called “connies,” and connies were the only means by which the seawall could be built, to reclaim the farmlands that would stave off the looming threat of famine.

To discover who had hired the mercenaries—and to determine if their goal was simply theft or an attack on EU interests—EU INTCEN tasked Francesca (and, with her, Cain) to go to Bolivia and find the truth.  What they found was a plot by the richest man on Earth—or off of it—and a global extortion conspiracy involving bribery, kidnapping, and war.  Francesca, undaunted by the odds, would stop at nothing to save her seawall project, but soon found herself betrayed by her own zeal, manipulated into compromising her reputation and career, and saw her life pushed to the cliff’s edge.

Cain must now fight through a web of off-world, sovereign corporations, conspiracies and counter-conspiracies, to make a lie the truth, and to pull Francesca back from oblivion.  From Sovereign Trade Zones in the American South to the rainforests of South America, Cain battles not only to remove the mercenary brigade, but to short-circuit the machinations of a trillionaire in An Uncalculated Risk, book 3 of The Cain Series.”

An Uncalculated Risk was particularly satisfying to write, in part because of its place in The Cain Series’ first novel cycle (which I wrote about here).  The first five novels in The Cain Series compose the first cycle and, with book 3, the larger, cycle-wide plot comes into focus.  Aside from those structural aspects, the book was also a lot of fun to write because we see Cain and Francesca return to the US, after all of book 2 taking place in Europe (or in orbit); some old friends from book 1 return, too, and we learn a bit more about Cain’s background, including an earlier score he pulled in the region.

Book 4 in The Cain Series is underway and progressing on schedule.  The plan remains to publish it later this year, November or December 2025.  In book 4, we’ll learn even more about Cain and Francesca’s pasts—and watch as their world changes forever, leading them into an uncertain future.