A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens.
An enthralling, epic fantasy about a world on the brink of war with dragons - and the women who must lead the fight to save it.
The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction - but assassins are getting closer to her door.
Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.
Across the dark sea, Tane has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.
Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.
Staff Choice: Renata
I buddyread this book with my niece, who lives in Brazil. It was really, really good. We had full conversations via WhatsApp about the story, the characters, the plot, the dragons… Ah, the dragons! Makes you wish you had the opportunity to meet one.
Staff Choice: Sophie
Here be dragons, and mages, and warriors, and alchemists, and queens, and sacred trees, and more mythical beasts than you can shake a stick at. All wrapped up in a quick-moving tale that spans an enormous and wonderfully conceived world. Shannon borrows from various cultures and mythologies around the globe and manages to give them her own twist, a little like I find Leigh Bardugo does in her Grisha world.
I also LOVED how there were so many women in this book. Epic fantasy full of epic women, MORE PLEASE! Not that there were no men; this is no inverted Tolkien or anything. But the girls kicked the butt here, in every sense. Ead, Tané, Sabran, Kalyba, the Golden Empress, Margret, all of them fleshed out and worthy of fan-art and fan-fic.
The only teeny gripe I have is that the ending somehow felt rushed - although that might also have been me who simply couldn’t stop reading!
