An ornate yet dark fantasy, with echoes of Mervyn Peake, Robin Hobb and
Jon Courtenay Grimwood. An original and beautifully imagined world,
populated by unforgettable characters. 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.
