Farlander
The Heart of the World is a land in strife. For fifty years the Holy Empire of Mann, an empire and religion born from a nihilistic urban cult, has been conquering nation after nation. Their leader, Holy Matriarch Sasheen, ruthlessly maintains control through her Diplomats, priests trained as subtle predators.
The Mercian Free Ports are the only confederacy yet to fall. Their only land link to the southern continent, a narrow isthmus known as the Lansway, is protected by the great walls of Bar-Khos. For ten years now, the city has been besieged by the Imperial Fourth Army. It is only a matter of time before it falls.
Ash is a member of a sect known as Rōshun, assassins who offer protection through the threat of vendetta. He is a man still haunted after many years by the death of his son. Forced by his ailing health to take on an apprentice, he chooses Nico, a young man living in the besieged city of Bar-Khos, whose own father is long gone, a deserter of his family. At the time, Nico is hungry, desperate, and alone in a city that finds itself teetering on the brink.
When the Holy Matriarch’s son murders a woman under the protection of the Rōshun, he forces the sect to seek his life in retribution. As Ash and his young apprentice set out to fulfil the vendetta, their journey takes them into the heart of the conflict between the Empire and the Free Ports … into bloodshed and death.
Stands a Shadow
The Heart of the World Book Two.
Sequel to Farlander released summer 2011.
The Heart of the World Series
Farlander
The Heart of the World
Book One
Hardback
(Tor, March 2010)
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