Built up on the millennia, layer upon layer, the City is ancient and vast. Within the centuries, they have sprawled beyond its wall space, the cause of constant battle with neighbouring peoples and kingdoms, laying waste materials from what was once green and fertile.

And in the centre of the City resides the emperor. Few possess ever seen him. Those who have remember a guy in his best and yet he ought to be extremely old. Some speculate that he’s no longer human, others wonder if certainly he ever truly was. And a little number about The City attended to a desperate bottom line: that the only path to avoid the ceaseless slaughter is definitely to get rid of the emperor’s unnaturally long life.

Through the rotting, flood-ruined catacombs under the City where the poor battle to stay alive towards the blood-soaked fields of battle where so few heroes survive, these rebels pin their hopes on one man. A man who was after the emperor’s most important general. A guy, a revered soldier, who could business lead an uprising and unite the town. But a guy who was betrayed, imprisoned, tortured and is now believed to be dead…

Volume Two of the astonishing debut fantasy book from Stella Gemmell, wife from the late, great David Gemmell.