Samuil Petrovitch Books in Order

The Samuil Petrovitch novels are fast, rough-edged science fiction set in the Metrozone, a fractured future version of London. The city has survived catastrophe, but survival has not made it safe. Refugees crowd its edges, gangs and corporate powers compete for control, and the people outside its protected areas have plenty of reasons to hate those within.

Samuil Petrovitch would rather stay unnoticed.

He is a Russian émigré, a brilliant physics student, and a survivor with a damaged heart and a past he keeps close. He has rules for staying alive, and the biggest one is not to get involved. In Equations of Life, he breaks that rule when he intervenes in an attempted kidnapping. The person he saves is connected to one of the most powerful figures in the Metrozone, which puts Petrovitch between criminal factions, corporate interests, police pressure, and a threat that is much bigger than a street-level dispute.

The series mixes cyberpunk energy with post-disaster London. Petrovitch's scientific ideas matter, especially as artificial intelligence and advanced technology begin to reshape the balance of power. But his intelligence does not make life simple. Every solution can create a new enemy, and every attempt to protect people pulls him further into the city's conflicts.

Theories of Flight raises the stakes after Petrovitch develops technology that others badly want. The Metrozone faces pressure from the OutZone, while a dangerous machine intelligence remains part of the problem. In Degrees of Freedom, threats involving a nuclear device and old enemies force Petrovitch and his allies into another desperate race across a city that is already close to breaking.

He is clever, stubborn, and often difficult.

The fourth book, The Curve of the Earth, shifts the danger closer to home when Petrovitch's adopted daughter, Lucy, goes missing. By this point he has saved the Metrozone more than once, made enemies far beyond London, and become tied to a found family that includes the fiercely capable Madeleine. The personal search becomes entangled with bigger political and technological threats, as it always does in Petrovitch's world.

These books are lively, violent, funny in a dark way, and packed with bad plans that become necessary plans. The future London is full of broken infrastructure, improvised communities, religious movements, criminal networks, and technology that can look almost like magic. Petrovitch is at the center, but the series keeps asking whether any one person can fix a system built to keep failing.

Read the novels in order: Equations of Life, Theories of Flight, Degrees of Freedom, and The Curve of the Earth. The main plot, the relationships, and the consequences of Petrovitch's choices build from one book to the next.