Shawn Speakman crafts stories steeped in the magic and wild beauty of Washington State. His career, deeply intertwined with the literary world, includes extensive experience in bookselling and managing online platforms for acclaimed authors. Speakman's writing delves into fantastical realms, exploring the very essence of magic and wonder. His narrative voice often reflects his own journey, offering readers captivating tales.
Forever shamed for family actions a century earlier, Antiquity Grey is a young woman living in a far-future city of Erth. It is a life of danger and hardship, dragons and advanced technology. But when she discovers an outlawed and operational mech buried in the sands of her planet, she realizes its secrets hold the power to reverse her family's dishonor while challenging the Imperium's off-world oppressive might.
In this first book of a new trilogy author Anna Smith Spark calls "a dark love letter to high fantasy," a woman discovers her unknown past carries with it a terrible future. When Alafair Goode lay wounded during his quest to destroy Mordreadth the Great Darkness, a witch magicked and saved the future High King's life to fulfill his destiny. Thereafter, all born to his line also cannot die, to be only undone by natural death. Decades later, Sylvie Raventress is the devoted apprentice to the Master Historian stepbrother of the High King. It is a life of scholarly pursuit and privilege where one day she will take her instructor's place and write her own histories. But beside Alafair's deathbed, Sylvie and his scions learn a surprising truth--she is no orphan but is his named heir. Worse, when he dies, the witch's curse is no more, leaving all of them suddenly mortal and vulnerable. With her siblings loathing Sylvie's selection and vying for her throne, she must rely on a Fae guide, a disgraced former First Knight, and a cantankerous light-weaver to restore the fracturing kingdom and become High Queen. And yet the thing none of them know is destiny has its own part to play too. For the witch saved Alafair Goode for her own reasons...