Perfect for fans Daniel Abraham and Brandon Sanderson, THE CHAOS QUEEN QUINTET is a dark and epic fantasy series that follows an amnesiac man, a woman with burgeoning magical abilities, and a priestess whose faith is tested as they become the center of a war between government and religion.
THE CHAOS QUEEN QUINTET
by Christopher Husberg
Titan, 2016 – 2021
(via JABberwocky)
Book 1: DUSKFALL (June 2016)
Stuck with arrows and close to death, a man is pulled from the icy waters of the Gulf of Nahl. As he is nursed back to health by a local fisherman, two things become very clear: he has no idea who he is, and he can kill a man with terrifying ease.
The fisherman is a tiellan, a race which has long been oppressed and grown wary of humans. His daughter, Winter, is a seemingly quiet young woman, but behind her placid mask she has her demons. She is addicted to frostfire – a substance that both threatens to destroy her and simultaneously gives her phenomenal power.
A young priestess, Cinzia, hears the troubling news of an uprising in her native city of Navone. Absconding from the cloistered life that she has kept for the last seven years, she knows she must make the long journey home. The flames of rebellion threatening her church and all that she believes in are bad enough, but far worse is the knowledge that the heretic who sparked the fire is her own sister.
These three characters may have set out on different paths, but fate will bring them together on one thrilling and perilous adventure.
Book 2: DARK IMMOLATION (June 2017)
A new religion is rising, gathering followers drawn by rumors of prophetess Jane Oden. Her sister Cinzia – one-time Cantic priestess – is by her side, but fears that Jane will lead them to ruin. For both the Church and the Nazaniin assassins are still on their trail, and much worse may come. Knot, his true nature now revealed if not truly understood, is haunted by the memories of others, and is not the ally he once was. Astrid travels to Tinska to find answers for her friend, but the child-like vampire has old enemies who have been waiting for her return. And beyond the Blood Gate in the northern empire of Roden, a tiellan woman finds herself with a new protector. One who wants to use her extraordinary abilities for his own ends.
Book 3: BLOOD REQUIEM (June 2018)
« Perfect for fans of Daniel Abraham and Brandon Sanderson. » Library Journal on DuskfallThe Nine Daemons are on the rise.Once believed dead and gone, Daemons have found a way back into the world. But the only people who can withstand their assault are spread across the face of the Sfaera.Free at last from the influence of assassins and emperors alike, the psimancer Winter sails back to her hometown—only to find a new trouble stirring. Meanwhile, the heretic sisters Jane and Cinzia Oden are beset by supernatural attacks. And soon their allies, the vampire-girl Astrid and the former assassin Knot, must face the terrifying Black Matron.As new battles are fought, the Daemons creep ever closer to freedom, and the legend of the Chaos Queen may soon be made anew.
Book 4: FEAR THE STARS (June 2019)
Many forces converge on the great city of Triah, bent on its destruction. By sea, Empress Cova of Roden sails with her armada, determined to bring the rival nation under her yoke. From land, Winter, the Chaos Queen, brings her tiellan army, set on revenge. And their advance brings a yet more terrible army still: awoken by the Chaos Queen’s powers, daemons mass on the border between worlds, waiting for a way in.
Caught between the encroaching foes, a small group holds the key to saving the Sfaera from destruction: Knot, the former assassin; Cinzia, the exiled priestess; and Astrid, the vampire-child. But the only way to do so is to step into the Void beyond worlds—from which no one can return unchanged.
Book 5: DAWNRISE (May 2021)
Nothing is as it seems.
Sfaera-shattering revelations reveal there is more to the Nine Daemons–and Canta–than anyone could have imagined, and deep in the heart of Triah, a threat that has lurked below the surface for years finally rises, gathering unimaginable power.
Knot, still reeling from a shocking death, tries to put himself back together in time to fight. Two ex-Nazaniin assassins, Code and Kali, form an unlikely alliance. Cinzia, more suspicious than ever of her sister Jane Oden–Canta’s prophetess–rallies as many people as she can to save the Sfaera from imminent destruction. And Winter, the Chaos Queen herself, realizes she must finally choose sides and face the greatest test of her life: finding the humility to seek help.
Deep in the heart of Triah, a threat that has lurked below the surface for years finally rises, gathering unimaginable power. Only the unlikely alliance formed between the two former Nazaniin assassins, Code and Kali, stands in its way.
Characters old and new join forces to preserve life as they know it. The darkest night the Sfaera has ever known is about to end, but whether it ends in daylight or destruction remains to be seen…
Christopher Husberg is the author of the Chaos Queen Quintet and contributed to the science fiction anthology Parallel Worlds. He received an MFA in creative writing from BYU. His short story, “Shelter Together,” was featured in the exhibit « A Desolating Sickness: Stories of Pandemic” at the Brigham Young University library.
Claire “Mac” Woods—a professor enjoying her newfound hotshot status at an academic conference—finally has the acceptance and admiration she has long craved. But at the conference’s hotel bar, Mac is surprised to run into a face from a past she’d rather forget: the moneyed, effortlessly perfect Gwendolyn Whitney, Mac’s foil, rival, and former best friend. When Gwen moved to town in high school, Claire—then known as Mac, a poor kid from a troubled family who had too much on her plate—saw what it meant to have. Money, sophistication, culture, the very blueprints to success. Mac had almost nothing, except the will to change. Change she did, habitually grinding herself to work as hard as straight-A Gwen, even eventually getting admitted into the same elite graduate program as Gwen. But then Mac and Gwen become entangled with the department’s power-couple professors and compete head-to-head for a life changing fellowship. The more twisted the track toward success becomes, the more Mac has to contort herself to stay one step ahead—which deception signals the point of no return? Jack-knifing between Mac’s world-expanding graduate days and the crucible of the hotel and its unexpected guests, Bad Habits follows Mac’s reckoning between her hardscrabble past and tenuous present. What, exactly, did Mac do to get what she has today? And what will she do to keep it? With taut, powerful prose, Amy Gentry asks how far we’ll go to get what we want—and whether we can ever truly leave the past behind.
In 1940, as the Nazis sweep toward Lithuania, Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara defies his own government and secretly issues thousands of visas to Jewish refugees desperate to flee. After the war, Sugihara is dismissed and disappears into obscurity.
Sawyer Stone III and Dani Fox, a young couple who spends their time circumnavigating the globe aboard their 42′ sailboat and documenting it for their fledgling YouTube channel Sailing with the Foxes, have anchored in Exuma, in the Bahamas.