First published 2012
At nine years old, Prince Jorg Ancrath hung trapped in a briar patch and watched Count Renar's soldiers kill his mother and younger brother. He survived. He did not recover. By thirteen, Jorg was leading a gang of brutal road thugs across a broken, post-apocalyptic medieval landscape, burning and killing with a coldness that unsettled even hardened men. Now fifteen, he turns his band back toward the Ancrath castle he abandoned, determined to claim the throne his father sits on. Jorg moves through the world as though pain is a currency he has already spent. Life and death register to him as moves in a game, and he plays without flinching. But the castle holds more than a father who never avenged his wife and son. Dark magic and calculated betrayal wait inside those walls. Jorg is ferocious and clever, yet the forces gathering against him reach beyond anything a sword or a cold will can simply cut through. The book asks a hard question: what does a boy become when rage is the only thing that kept him alive?
Genres: adventure, fantasy, young-adult, dark-fantasy, epic-fantasy, post-apocalyptic
Vibes: atmospheric, brutal, dark, gritty, intense, psychologically-complex
Tropes: anti-hero, dark-coming-of-age, found-family, revenge-driven-protagonist
Setting: Ancrath castle, post-apocalyptic medieval landscape
Period: post-apocalyptic
373 pages · Paperback · Harper Voyager
Content warnings: child-abuse, death, graphic-violence, murder