An ornate yet dark fantasy, with echoes of Scott Lynch, Robin Hobb and
Jon Courtenay Grimwood. An original and beautifully imagined world,
populated by unforgettable characters. A debut novel which garnered rave
reviews on publication from fellow authors, bloggers and the likes of
SFX magazine.
Lucien de Fontein has grown up different. One of the mysterious and
misshapen Orfano who appear around the Kingdom of Landfall, he is a
talented fighter yet constantly lonely, tormented by his deformity, and
well aware that he is a mere pawn in a political game. Ruled by an
insane King and the venomous Majordomo, it is a world where corruption
and decay are deeply rooted - but to a degree Lucien never dreams
possible when he first discovers the plight of the 'insane' women kept
in the haunting Sanatoria.
Told in a continuous narrative interspersed with flashbacks we see
Lucien grow up under the care of his tutors. We watch him forced through
rigorous Testings, and fall in love, set against his yearning to
discover where he comes from, and how his fate is tied to that of every
one of the deformed Orfano in the Kingdom, and of the eerie Sanatoria
itself.