House of Open Wounds
Behind the front lines of a crusade to scour the world of magic, the crew of a field hospital confront the horrors of war. A companion novel to Adrian Tchaikovsky's award-winning fantasy novel City of Last Chances
City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world. As their legions scour the world of superstition with the bright flame of reason, so they deliver a mountain of ragged, holed and scorched flesh to the field hospital tents just behind the front line.
Which is where Yasnic, one-time priest, healer and rebel, finds himself. Reprieved from the gallows and sent to war clutching a box of orphan Gods, he has been sequestered to a particularity unorthodox medical unit.
Led by 'the Butcher', an ogre of a man who's a dab hand with a bone-saw and an alchemical tincture, the unit's motley crew of conscripts, healers and orderlies are no strangers to the horrors of war. Theirs is an unspeakable trade: elbow-deep in gore they have a first-hand view of the suffering caused by flesh-rending monsters, arcane magical weaponry and embittered enemy soldiers.
Entrusted – for now – with saving lives deemed otherwise un-saveable, the field hospital's crew face a precarious existence. Their work with unapproved magic, necromancy, demonology and Yasnic's thoroughly illicit Gods could lead to the unit being disbanded, arrested or worse.
Beset by enemies within and without, the last thing anyone needs is a miracle…
Readers also enjoyed
Adrian Tchaikovsky
In the realm of speculative fiction, where the boundaries between science and imagination blur, Adrian Tchaikovsky writes with the precision of a biologist and the curiosity of a philosopher. Known for weaving evolutionary theory into alien worlds and giving sentience to the most unexpected of creatures, he crafts stories that challenge not just what it means to be human—but what it means to be alive.
Tchaikovsky’s breakout novel, Children of Time, didn’t just introduce readers to a distant planet populated by hyper-intelligent spiders—it redefined what readers expect from space opera. Bold, cerebral, and emotionally resonant, the book went on to win the Arthur C. Clarke Award, with its sequel Children of Ruin deepening the saga’s exploration of consciousness, cooperation, and survival. In 2023, the Children of Time series earned the Hugo Award for Best Series, a fitting recognition for stories that dare to look evolution in the eye and ask: what if?
The Tyrant Philosophers
The Tyrant Philosophers consists of four primary books, and includes one additional book that complement the series but is not considered mandatory reads and series is set to expand with the upcoming release of one more book. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
