The Crown of Thorns

The war between Light and Shadow wages on.

Draden Lucian, the first Sovereign to lay claim to Azadia in millennia, faces an uphill battle, not only in the fight against their ancient and powerful enemy, Alrya, but also to establish himself as king among the resistant lords and ladies of Azadia.

Among his first tasks as Sovereign, Draden appoints an old friend and former mercenary, Epomina Maris, to lead a large force from disparate regions of Azadia against one of Alrya's most important - and dangerous - colonies, the world of Ephemerial. But in spite unlocking access to the elusive magic of Storm Craft, Epomina will have to grow more powerful - as a warrior, and a leader - to find any hope of overcoming one of Alrya's best-defended outposts.

A horrific attempt on Draden's life sends his sister, Sarien, on a journey across Azadia to hunt down the would-be assassin - and their employer. But the erstwhile adventurer discovers more than she means to, and loses more than she expects, to uncover a conspiracy beyond anything she imagined.

Meanwhile, Jak, the newly appointed Prophet of the Serpent God, finds himself in a strange new world where a mysterious caiden family - masters in the magic of Blood Craft - dwell in a living castle forged from the alien earth. But something is amiss with this family of escaped slaves from the Lower Kingdoms of Azadia, and discovering their secret, while struggling with his own newfound identity as Prophet, may prove to be Jak's undoing.

As the Azadians fight to take the war off their own soil and onto that of their enemies, the sentrians wage their own power struggles in the heart of Alrya itself. Embriel, an elderly, highranking leader among the Choirs of Siyon, the capital of Alrya, is weary in both body and spirit, longing for an end to the war and severity that afflicts his beloved empire. Yet he can only watch as growing corruption from younger and stronger sentrians not only threatens Alrya's stability, but may cost him everything. Not far away, Hazet, a young maidservant in a prominent sentrian household, bears the weight of serving an empire that despises her. Though in very different positions, both sentrians must realize that their homeland is no longer on their side - or face their own destruction at its hands.

Now, in the struggle to legitimize himself as Sovereign of Azadia, Draden sets forth for the Gate of the Elder Kings, a mystic site created by the first Sovereigns, and there finds far more than he bargained for as the war between Alrya and Azadia spirals into higher stakes than ever before.

The Crown of Thorns is the second entry in The Sagas of the Fallen Earth, an epic of gothic fantasy.