Skullsworn
Brian Staveley’s new standalone returns to the critically acclaimed Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne universe, following a priestess attempting to join the ranks of the God of Death.
Pyrre Lakatur doesn’t like the word skullsworn. It fails to capture the faith and grace, the peace and beauty of her devotion to the God of Death. She is not, to her mind, an assassin, not a murderer — she is a priestess. At least, she will be a priestess if she manages to pass her final trial.
The problem isn’t the killing. Pyrre has been killing and training to kill, studying with some of the most deadly men and women in the world, since she was eight. The problem, strangely, is love. To pass her trial, Pyrre has ten days to kill the ten people enumerated in an ancient song, including “the one you love / who will not come again.”
Pyrre is not sure she’s ever been in love. If she were a member of a different religious order, a less devoted, disciplined order, she might cheat. The priests of Ananshael, however, don’t look kindly on cheaters. If Pyrre fails to find someone to love, or fails to kill that someone, they will give her to the god. Pyrre’s not afraid to die, but she hates to quit, hates to fail, and so, with a month before her trial begins, she returns to the city of her birth, the place where she long ago offered an abusive father to the god and abandoned a battered brother — in the hope of finding love... and ending it on the edge of her sword.
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Brian Staveley
In the high peaks of fantasy fiction, few voices echo with the same blend of lyricism and raw intensity as Brian Staveley’s. His stories don’t just build worlds—they carve them from stone and shadow, echoing with the clash of empires and the quiet, devastating choices of those caught in their wake. What sets his work apart isn’t just the scale of his imagination, but the emotional weight carried by every sword stroke, every whispered betrayal, every question of faith.
Staveley burst onto the fantasy scene with The Emperor’s Blades, the first novel in The Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne, a trilogy that would go on to define his signature style: poetic, philosophical, and unflinchingly brutal. Set in a fractured empire on the verge of collapse, the series follows the children of a murdered emperor as they unravel conspiracies stretching beyond the bounds of the known world. It was more than just a debut—it was a declaration. The novel earned him the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Newcomer and a devoted readership drawn to the moral complexity of his characters and the haunting beauty of his prose.
The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne
The emperor of Annur is dead, slain by enemies unknown. His daughter and two sons, scattered across the world, do what they must to stay alive and unmask the assassins. But each of them also has a life-path on which their father set them, destinies entangled with both ancient enemies and inscrutable gods.
The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne consists of four books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
Related series Ashes of the Unhewn Throne
