The Neodymium Chronicles

Lem’s a mace-wielding teen space-ninja in a universe of sentient insectoids, purple jungles, and insane electromagnetic fields. She solves most problems by hitting harder, and never plays by her enemy's rules - until Jared Diebol captures her. Diebol is the rising leader of an army uniting the galaxy by force. He believes that the violent energy being Njande has “contaminated” Lem and her friends from another dimension to conquer the matter-based universe. Diebol’s army usually kills contaminated people - but he vows to cure Lem.

On a normal day of interplanetary sabotage, young Jei Bereens has things under control. He's plagued by night terrors and an archenemy as slippery as the grime on his gun, but freedom fighters all around the galaxy look to him for help. He's got the favor of an energy being and a best friend who'd die for him. On a normal day, Jei is legend. Today is not a normal day. Today, Jei broke an enemy soldier's mask and found his best friend inside. Tomorrow, that best friend will sell Jei out in the name of saving the universe. And the next day, Jei will disobey orders to take her down.

Exiled after going AWOL to save her world, Lem Benzaran lives in a changed galaxy in the aftermath of a purge that wiped entire planets clean of people like herself. A vague prophecy plagues her isolation: she’s destined to cause the universe’s heat death.

Lem’s world is ending. That’s not just her personal world, even though she’s still reeling a year after burying one of her best friends at the bottom of a desert ravine—and she’s got family enslaved by actual mind control on a distant planet under military blockade. It’s not just her political world, either, even though the freedom fighters she served since childhood seem pretty happy believing she died after they exiled her. No, the actual Universe is under attack as interdimensional forces siphon its energy into another plane, eager to speed along its final heat death.

The universe is barreling toward heat death. Interdimensional energy beings see matter-based life forms as an energy-consuming plague—and to support their case, sentients do have a habit of destroying every world we touch. Either matter-beings will be forced to give back the energy we’ve co-opted, or we need someone else to fill that deficit.