Dani
Candidate, the Kings program
Engineered before she was born to be among humanity's best, and entirely unwilling to accept that as an explanation of who she is. Dani leads by refusing to stop asking the next question.
An imprint of Evamaya Publishing House
Science fiction from the edge of the known.
Distant Star Books publishes science fiction that sparks wonder — new worlds, bold heroes and big questions.
The debut novel
The Secret of CROWN
by Maya Marroquin
Humanity was asked to send its best. Did it understand the assignment?
Twenty years after nuclear war shattered civilization, an alien probe appeared above Earth. It brought impossible materials, miraculous medicine, and knowledge capable of rebuilding a broken world. Then, for generations, it remained silent. Until now.
The probe has asked humanity to send representatives, but it has not said where they will go, what they will face, or why they were chosen. Dani and C.C. were built by CROWN to be among humanity's best. Yet the probe's message may not mean what CROWN believes it does. Humanity survived the end of its world. Now its children must answer an invitation from the stars.
- Genre
- Young-adult dystopian science fiction
- Reading age
- Ages 13 and up
- Hardcover
- Available now — October 15, 2026
- Paperback & eBook
- November 16, 2026 — preorder open
- Series
- Book one — The Servator
No fleets. No claws. No demands. The visitors are not monsters and they are not saviors — and nothing in ninety-three years of measurement has established that human motives apply to them at all.
Meet the characters
Who you will be following
Reader-facing introductions, kept free of spoilers. The fuller — and less trustworthy — dossiers live inside the CROWN portal.
C.C.
Candidate, the Kings program
Dani's closest friend and sharpest counterweight. Where Dani pushes, C.C. calculates — and when the calculation says no, he says it out loud.
Sero
Candidate, the Kings program
Quiet, exact, and far harder to read than the training records suggest. Sero notices what the others are too busy to see.
The other Kings
Candidate cohort
A cohort raised together, tested together, and ranked against one another. They are friends. They are also, officially, alternatives to one another.
Director Pierce
CROWN civilian leadership
Believes deeply that stability is a moral achievement, and that the people who protect it are permitted a great deal of latitude.
General Rourke
CROWN military command
A soldier from the reconstruction who has already watched one world end. He does not intend to be present for the second.
Dr. Sophie Hartmann
Chief scientist, Servator research
The person most willing to say the words “we do not know” in rooms where that sentence is career-ending.
ARI
Artificial intelligence
Helpful, precise, and constitutionally honest — within the boundaries of what ARI has been permitted to know.
Meet the author
A young author with a long question list
Maya Marroquin is a sixteen-year-old author whose interests span biology, mathematics, aviation, literature, medicine, and the unanswered questions beyond our world.
Maya began writing The Secret of CROWN at fourteen. She did not announce that she was writing a novel or begin with a detailed publishing plan. She simply started writing and continued until she had created a substantial manuscript, an extensive history, a large cast of characters, and enough ideas for several interconnected stories.
Read her full story →
CROWN Secure Network | Incoming transmission
Enter the CROWN universe
Dossiers, declassified records, a political map of a rebuilt world, and everything humanity thinks it knows about the sphere that will not answer. An interactive extension of the novel.