A young soldier finds himself hunted by his own king in this second installment of a YA fantasy series.

Castien Varic is a Stormless—a person born without magical abilities. On the continent of Auris, this puts him at a disadvantage: The crystal-wielding Summoners are able to call upon the powers of the seven Tempests in battle, but Castien is forced to rely on his skills with a bow. He is in a particularly tricky spot at the moment, since one of his friends, the Summoner Ilyana, turned out to be a spy and assassinated Castien’s liege lord, the king of Arvendon, Avenos Titansworn. Now, Castien is an accessory to murder. For the sake of survival, he’s forced to flee to Celes, a rival kingdom with which Arvendon is now at war. Ilyana, it turns out, is the daughter of the king of Celes, who was also recently assassinated. Avenos ordered the killing, a move that sparked Ilyana’s retribution. Castien can only hope that at some point he will be able to sabotage Celes and redeem himself in the eyes of Arvendon. The new king of Arvendon, Summoner Faelyn Titansworn, is hellbent on tracking down his father’s killers, but will his desire for revenge be his undoing? Meanwhile, the powerful Asteros Silverglade awakens after a long sleep in the Void, ready to learn further secrets from the shadowy creature called the Emissary. What he learns will change his understanding of Auris’ past—and have grim ramifications for the coming conflict. Stitle’s prose is imbued with quiet magic that helps sell this fantasy world: “Ash swirled in the air, twisting and turning through the morning winds. It fell from the sky like rain, a quiet echo of destruction gently floating to the ground. White wisps swirled around, dancing in and out of the billowing smoke.” It’s all standard fare for the epic fantasy genre, but given Stitle’s youth—he’s only 17 years old, according to his author bio—it’s a highly impressive work of storytelling. Fantasy fans will devour this latest installment and look forward to the volumes that lie ahead for this promising writer.

An ambitious, engrossing fantasy epic from a talented young author.

Stitle presents a YA epic-fantasy series starter about a magic-filled world on the cusp of change and the three people at the center of it all.

The story starts with a seeming impossibility, as a Summoner from a Sect that’s been thought to be long extinct walks into King Avenos Titansworn’s Summerglass Palace. The visitor has a frightening message: The Resurgence is coming, which means that the world of Auris is in danger, and the Blood Sorcerers are its only hope. Soldier Castien Varic is a Stormless—a person without magical powers—who’s tasked to join the King’s band of Auris’ most powerful Summoners on a mission to determine the truth of the message. Back on the palace grounds, Prince Faelyn Titansworn is torn between his loyalty to his father and his loyalty to the kingdom—especially when the King seems to be in denial about the dangers they’re facing. In a storyline set two years in the past, Asteros Silverglade, the leader of Auris’ most deadly Sect, finds a trove of ancient knowledge that offers revelations about the mysterious Vanishing of ancient Sects—and the Tempests that ravage the land and fuel the Summoners’ magic. It’s knowledge that portends either the end of everything or the start of something entirely new. Over the course of this fantasy novel, Stitle offers readers a complex, multithreaded narrative that deftly introduces its setting through imaginative worldbuilding. Along the way, it features a unique, intriguing magic system and well-developed character arcs set against a backdrop of secrets and unreliable history. It also effectively notes the effects that cataclysmic events could have on Auris’ citizens’ lives: “If the Resurgence were to begin, the rising tensions throughout Auris would escalate to war….Without the Stormless as pawns, the Summoners would tear one another apart.” As the three main plot threads move toward convergence, so do the fates of its characters, resulting in an engaging, if sometimes discomfiting, work.

A fine introduction to a new fantasy setting that’s likely to leave readers eager for more.