A literary dystopian series

The Last Hand

Book One: Still Here

They took his name. They took his brother. They have not yet taken him.

Coming late 2026 / early 2027

We'll email you when Still Here launches. Nothing else.

The Last Hand: Still Here, the book cover, by Dominic Roworth.
01

The Story

Two centuries after a manufactured collapse left a depopulated world ruled by a quiet ancient cabal, fourteen-year-old Elias Vance is torn from his younger brother on a windowless train and delivered to a labour camp that exists for one purpose: to forge boys into hunters for the Last Hand.

To survive the camp, Elias becomes the boy who gets up. To survive the year-long Trials in the dead lands beyond, he becomes something colder. And to find out what happened to the brother he lost, and the mother who died ten years ago with her mouth shut, he will have to climb a leaderboard built of other boys’ bodies, take a deal from a man who loved his mother, and walk through a door at the top of a world that has been waiting for his surname for a generation.

Still Here is Book One of The Last Hand: a brutal, hopeful, grounded dystopia about revenge, transformation, and the cost of becoming the thing your enemies fear.

Read more about the book
02

The World

Two hundred years before the book opens, the old world ended. It was not a collapse. It was a coup.

A small cabal of administrators inside what had been a global authority engineered the famines, the wars, and the plagues that returned four times in nine years and killed two of every three people. They chose pathogens that struck men hardest. What they left is a world with three or four women for every man, no nations, no place-names, only the Last Hand and the wilderness they control.

The Hand keeps its own zones clean and ordered. Everything between is melancholy, reclaimed wilderness: green growing through collapsed cities, rivers gone wild, the rusted bones of the old world swallowed by forest. There is no magic here. All the horror, and all the wonder, are human.

“A world ruled by men who ended it. A boy climbing toward the room they meet in.”
03

The Opening

I am going to die on a cliff edge above a river I never learned the name of, because rivers don’t have names anymore, because nothing out here does.

That is the thought I have, clear and almost calm, as the fourth one circles in behind me and I understand, with the cold arithmetic this place taught me, that there is no version of the next thirty seconds where I walk away.

From the opening of Still Here
04

The Author

Dominic Roworth, author of The Last Hand

Dominic Roworth is a writer from Gibraltar. A lifelong reader with a weakness for long novels (his favourite is The Count of Monte Cristo), he has only recently started writing one of his own. Still Here is his debut, the first book of The Last Hand trilogy.

Read more about the book →

05

Questions

When is Still Here being released?
Still Here, Book One of The Last Hand, is in first draft, with a publication target of late 2026 or early 2027. The early-reader list is the first place any launch news is shared.
What is Still Here about?
Fourteen-year-old Elias Vance is taken from his younger brother on a windowless train and delivered to a camp that forges boys into hunters for the Last Hand, the cabal who rule what is left of the world. To find his brother, and the truth about his own family, he has to climb to the top of it.
What genre is The Last Hand?
Adult-crossover dystopia and literary speculative fiction. Brutal, grounded, and hopeful, in the lineage of Red Rising, The Hunger Games, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Attack on Titan.
Is this for fans of Red Rising or The Hunger Games?
Yes. If you love the forging of Red Rising, the survival and rebellion of The Hunger Games, and the patient revenge of The Count of Monte Cristo, The Last Hand is written for you.
Who is Dominic Roworth?
Dominic Roworth is a writer from Gibraltar and a lifelong reader of long novels, with The Count of Monte Cristo his favourite. He has recently started writing, and Still Here is his debut, the opening of The Last Hand trilogy.
What do early readers get?
Subscribers hear launch news first and get the first chance at advance reader copies. We will only email you about The Last Hand. No spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime.

The early-reader list

Still here. Still here.

Be the first to know when Still Here launches. We will only email you about the book. Nothing else.

We'll email you when the book launches. Nothing else.