Jon Sprunk Books

Some fantasy novels are gritty and dark, and some are absolute murder ...

<b>Danger lurks in the unforgiving Northlands, and a sinister magic lurks in the shadows waiting for its moment to strike. It’s the worst place to be searching for something, even for an assassin with no loyalties and even fewer scruples...</b><br /><br />In Othir, he was at the top of the food chain. An assassin beyond compare. A dark shadow in the night. But Caim left that life behind when he helped an empress claim her throne. <br /><br />Now, searching for the truth behind the murder and disappearance of his parents in the bitterly cold Northlands of his birth, Caim finds himself in a land in thrall to the Shadow. A wielder of the darkest kinds of blood magic imaginable holds his homeland in their iron fist, crushing all opposition beneath their tyrannous boot. Haunted by temptations from the Other Side, by turns in control of his magic and at the mercy of the Shadow, Caim becomes mired in a war he does not want to fight.<br /><br />But there are some things a son of the Shadow cannot ignore, and some battles from which he can’t run. If Caim is going to survive—and if he’s to uncover the truth about his own magic and his parent’s death—then he is going to have to fight. But will his strength and skill be enough? Can anyone resist the Shadow’s Lure...?

Caim must venture to the frozen Northlands finally to reclaim his destiny ...

This action-heavy EPIC FANTASY SERIES OPENER is like a sword-and-sorcery Spartacus set in a richly-imagined world. It starts with a shipwreck following a magical storm at sea. Horace, a soldier from the west, had joined the Great Crusade against the heathens of Akeshia after the deaths of his wife and son from plague. When he washes ashore, he finds himself at the mercy of the very people he was sent to kill, who speak a language and have a culture and customs he doesn't even begin to understand. Not long after, Horace is pressed into service as a house slave. But this doesn't last. The Akeshians discover that Horace was a latent sorcerer, and he is catapulted from the chains of a slave to the halls of power in the queen's court. Together with Jirom, an ex-mercenary and gladiator, and Alyra, a spy in the court, he will seek a path to free himself and the empire's caste of slaves from a system where every man and woman must pay the price of blood or iron. Before the end, Horace will have paid dearly in both.