Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne

The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley opens with the assassination of the Annurian Emperor and the quiet collapse of imperial stability. His three children are scattered: Valyn, enduring lethal training with an elite military unit while suspecting sabotage; Adare, a high-ranking minister in the capital, navigating dangerous political factions as she seeks her father’s killer; and Kaden, the heir, secluded in a harsh mountain monastery where monks of the Blank God teach unsettling disciplines. As each sibling confronts threats that blend steel, magic, and religious mystery, their separate struggles begin to reveal a coordinated design against the empire and its ruling line.

The Providence of Fire by Brian Staveley continues the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne with a focus on political fracture, religious influence, and large-scale warfare in the Annurian Empire. Adare, accused and isolated, escapes the Dawn Palace to gather support against the usurpers, her cause transformed when many begin to see her as chosen by Intarra, the empire’s patron goddess. Meanwhile, her brother Valyn, once part of an elite military order, has turned outlaw and aligned himself with invading nomadic forces, setting sibling against sibling as armies converge. Between them moves Kaden, the heir to the Unhewn Throne, whose hidden return to the capital and access to forbidden history may either stabilize a collapsing realm or push it into ruin.

The Last Mortal Bond by Brian Staveley concludes the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne with a focus on large-scale war, political fracture, and divine interference. As the Annurian Empire faces invasion from multiple fronts, ancient csestriim return to eradicate humanity, leaches manipulate events using their connection to natural forces, and gods move among mortals with opaque intentions. At the center stand the three imperial heirs—Valyn, Adare, and Kaden—whose clashing beliefs about power, justice, and the empire’s future threaten to be as destructive as any external enemy. This final volume blends epic and high fantasy elements with an adult focus on consequence, ideology, and the cost of survival.

Skullsworn by Brian Staveley is a standalone fantasy novel set in the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne universe, following Pyrre Lakatur, an aspiring priestess of the God of Death. To earn her place in the order, she must complete a ten-day trial that requires seven ritual killings named in an old song, including someone she truly loves. Certain of her skill with a blade but unsure she has ever experienced real love, Pyrre returns to her violent river-city homeland to seek both passion and a target. Blending epic and high fantasy with intimate character focus, the book explores faith, mortality, and desire against a backdrop of political tension and dangerous magic.

The Empire's Ruin by Brian Staveley opens a new epic fantasy arc in the world of the Annurian Empire, where elite hawk-riding soldiers known as the Kettral are nearly extinct and the empire’s instant-travel gates have failed. Gwenna Sharpe, a battered Kettral operative, is sent on a hazardous expedition beyond mapped territory to find the legendary breeding grounds of the war hawks, crossing landscapes twisted by hostile, corrupting forces. In a parallel thread, a monk turned swindler becomes entangled in efforts to restore the broken gates that once bound the empire together. Blending large-scale political stakes with dangerous exploration and strange magic, this first volume in the Ashes of the Unhewn Throne trilogy sets up a grim, far-ranging struggle for survival and renewal.