So… a question I’ve gotten asked a lot was about a US edition of The House of Sundering Flames, book 3 in the Dominion of the Fallen series. It’s been… tricky (to cut short a long story, I’m out of contract in the US and it’s not super easy to convince a publisher to pick book 3 of a series).

I’m pleased to announce that The House of Sundering Flames is now available for sale through JABberwocky Literary Agency, with a gorgeous atmospheric cover that matches those of the US editions.

Art and cover design is by Dirk Berger, who also did the UK edition of The Tea Master and the Detective (with thanks to John Berlyne for all the help).

This concludes the Dominion of the Fallen series (after The House of Shattered Wings and The House of Binding Thorns). Expect: more Gothic devastated Paris, more dragons, more snark, queer families, Vietnamese immortals, and creepy trees + creepy hawks!

Here’s the cover copy:

The white-hot conclusion to the Dominion of the Fallen trilogy by the multi-award-winning author…

The Great Houses of Paris—headed by Fallen angels and magicians—have co-existed in fragile peace. When a powerful explosion razes House Harrier, old alliances are torn apart and a race begins to fill the power void.

Thuan, the beleaguered dragon head of House Hawthorn, finds a war on his doorstep. Aurore, once cast out by Harrier and almost beaten to death, seeks power to protect her family—and must venture back to her former home. And, in the ruins of House Harrier, Emmanuelle desperately tries to piece her fragmented memories of the explosion.

But beneath House Harrier awaits a fiery magic that hungers for destruction. And it is time for Houses and Houseless to stand together—or be engulfed in flames…

Praise for The House of Sundering Flames:

Incredible… one of the most original, fantasy settings I’ve seen

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of Children of Ruin

thrilling and creepy A.F., a definite must for fans of de Bodard and fantastical fiction.

Tade Thompson, Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of The Rosewater trilogy

The perfect closure of the trilogy! Really took my breath away more than once.

FrauMiest (Goodreads)

Buy book 1, The House of Shattered Wings:

Buy book 2, The House of Binding Thorns:

The third book in Dominion of the Fallen, The House of Sundering Flames, is out now!

Gothic devastated Paris, dragons under the waters of the Seine, flower spirits, ruined houses and monuments–my love letter to the 19th Century with more queer people and more Vietnamese people.

Things are about to burn…

Buy book 1, The House of Shattered Wings:

Buy book 2, The House of Binding Thorns:

A quick reminder that as we approach the publication of The House of Sundering Flames (less than two weeks!!), you can read chapter 1 here!

Come back to a Gothic devastated Paris where dragons, magicians and Fallen angels fight for dominion–and where a devastating explosion ensures that nothing will ever be the same…

(also: Vietnamese dragons! Queer relationships and queer families! Creepy trees and even creepier birds! Sarcasm, flirting and murder(*))

(*)not always in that order or indeed, not always in the same scene

It’s almost a month before publication of the final Dominion of the Fallen book, The House of Sundering Flames (coming July 27th from Gollancz), so here’s a little snippet from the beginning:

In Emmanuelle’s dreams, the world was fire. Angels rose on wings of flame towards a distant, unattainable City: a concoction of mother-of-pearl buildings, enameled domes and white, eye-searing streets in which featureless shapes flowed past each other. At the top of the highest tower was the light of a burning sun—it couldn’t be watched, couldn’t be held within her field of vision without hurting her eyes or burning her face. She reached out towards it—towards Him—and everything fell apart, the flames becoming the jagged shards of a vast, unknowable puzzle raining down on her.

She woke up, and everything hurt. She lay on her back for a while, staring at a sky that wasn’t gray—that wasn’t even the cornflower blue of Lucifer Morningstar’s eyes, or of the heavens as they had been, before the war, before the pall of pollution. It was an odd shade of purple, shading into indigo. As she watched, sounds intruded: distant clatters, and a rumble, like stones collapsing atop each other. It was hot—too hot.

She needed to get up.

What to expect: a Gothic Paris devastated by a magical war, a bi dragon prince with a gift for trouble, explosions, back stabbings and creepy birds! (oh, and creepy trees, too. Because apparently nature is scary insofar as I’m concerned).

If you want to know more, there’ll be a longer excerpt (the whole of chapter 1, which has dragon prince Thuan as an additional point of view character) going out tomorrow with the newsletter: you can sign up here!

More info about the book here.

So very pleased to announce that book 3 of Dominion of the Fallen, The House of Sundering Flames, will be published by Gollancz on July 26th 2019.

Official information at the The Bookseller.

This is basically a book inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell, about how the post apocalypse would involve fighting for survival but also extraordinary kindness. Featuring: hawks, explosions, queer families, Vietnamese dragons and murderbirds(*).

Focusing on House Harrier in Grenelle (15e arrondissement of Paris), though most of the cast of the prior two books will be making a comeback.

(*)not the hawks, but the deadly combination of a deadpan do-gooder bi dragon prince and his husband, best described as lawful evil with ground rules and no scruples. Given a run for their money by the tag-team of an insecure but ruthlessly protective leader and her idealistic partner, entirely resigned to the trouble that follows them around.

Just a quick note that my Dominion of the Fallen story “Court of Birth, Court of Strength” is now up at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

In the ruins of a Gothic Paris, a city devastated in the wake of a magical war, a young and sheltered Fallen angel goes to an older one for help in finding a missing child.

The leader of House Hawthorn’s Court of Birth lived in a part of the House that Samariel had never been to: a wing of dusty, disused corridors where the wainscoting had rotted away and the wallpaper’s elegant asphodels were obscured by elongated smudges of grey fungus. The door was small and crooked. Samariel would have thought it the entrance to a garret, but it opened into a wide, airy space with barely a trace of mould or spells gone awry. A makeshift antechamber held two Louis XV armchairs with plump, curved mahogany legs, and behind it was the shape of a four-poster bed that had seen better days, its silk canopy patched so many times the patterns on it had all but disappeared under the seams of repairs.

Read online!

(for anyone who’s read the books: this happens before The House of Shattered Wings, and it’s the Asmodeus/Samariel courtship story!)

So once upon a time I needed a fun break, and I wrote a story about how Asmodeus and Samariel first met and flirted with each other (if you’re asking how, the answer is “smouldering mode on”). Because apparently I cannot do fun even if I try, this is a story of what happens when Samariel, a low-ranked bodyguard in House Hawthorn, hires Asmodeus when the child he considers his own gets kidnapped, and how the two of them handle a Gothic, devastated Paris rife with intrigue to get said child back (“how does it go?” you ask. If you already know Asmodeus, the answer is “about as well as you can imagine”).

Anyway, I’m pleased to announce I’ve sold the story to Scott Andrews at Beneath Ceaseless Skies for their ten-year-anniversary issue, and that it’ll appear in late September online.

(although set in the existing universe of Dominion of the Fallen, it should be completely standalone–as evidenced by the fact that Scott, who’d read neither of the novels, liked it enough to buy :))

Just a quick note to let you know that the UK paperback of The House of Binding Thorns is now out! As a result, the ebook has also dropped in price.

Dragons, revolutions, betrayals in a Gothic devastated Paris where the Seine runs black with rubble, and where Houses fight a cold war of attrition amidst the ruins…

The official summary:

The multi-award winning author of The House of Shattered Wings continues her Dominion of the Fallen saga as Paris endures the aftermath of a devastating arcane war…

As the city rebuilds from the onslaught of sorcery that nearly destroyed it, the Great Houses of Paris, ruled by fallen angels, still contest one another for control over the capital.

House Silverspires was once the most powerful, but just as it sought to rise again, an ancient evil brought it low. Philippe, an immortal who escaped the carnage, has a singular goal—to resurrect someone he lost. But the cost of such magic may be more than he can bear.

In House Hawthorn, Madeleine the alchemist has had her addiction to angel essence savagely broken. Struggling to live on, she is forced on a perilous diplomatic mission to the underwater Dragon Kingdom—and finds herself in the midst of intrigues that have already caused one previous emissary to mysteriously disappear…

As the Houses seek a peace more devastating than war, those caught between new fears and old hatreds must find strength—or fall prey to a magic that seeks to bind all to its will.

It’s on the following best-of-2017 lists:

• Locus Recommended Reading List
• Amazon
• Tor.com Reviewers’ Choice
• Barnes and Noble Sci Fi & Fantasy blog
• The Guardian (Adam Roberts)
• The Verge (Andrew Liptak, Recommended Book)
• Fantasy-Faction
• SciFiNow: 35 Books you should have read in 2017 (Jonathan Hatfull)
• Fantasy Cafe

(this is book 2 in a series, but it’s standalone and can be read without book 1. Though you’ll see more familiar things and Easter Eggs if you read book 1 first, naturally)

And today is release date for the UK edition of The House of Binding Thorns! Ruined and decadent turn-of-the-century Paris, dragons, Fallen angels, intrigue, revolutions, betrayals! (and it’s standalone: you can read it without having read the first one and it works just fine).

I hate to say this, but given that this is the way things work–the likelihood of me getting to write more novels in this universe (or indeed, more novels, full stop) is entirely dependent on sales, so if you fancy picking up a copy (whichever format) I’d be very grateful. And if you like it, dropping a good word about it on social media or reviewing at goodreads/amazon (doesn’t have to be long reviews–I’ll take inarticulate squeeing too *grin*) or recommending to a friend would help immensely.

Here are a few blog posts I did for the release:
–“Unfamiliar Rooms: Magic and Dread in Kari Sperring’s The Grass King’s Concubine” at Tor.com
–Geography of alternate destroyed Paris and terrible bilingual puns at Mary Robinette Kowal’s My Favourite Bit
–“In Defence of Uncanny Punctuation” at Chuck Wendig’s blog: a blog post with semicolons and durians, all the best things in life ^-^

And here are a few reviews:

A successful continuation of a truly grand story, brimming with action, heart, representation, and magic.

Martin Cahill, Barnes and Noble blog

A striking example of a story that both stands alone and expands (…) truly beautifully balanced: between new and old, birth and death, beauty and ugliness, inside and outside, beginning and, yes, ending. It walks the line, and walks it fine.

Niall Alexander, Tor.com

Want to play a fun game?
Leticia Lara has kindly made a Dominion of the Fallen word search puzzle–you can go look for the heads of the major Houses in the books, here. I’m offering three UK mass market paperback edition of The House of Shattered Wings if you can find them all!

(if you want to actually solve the puzzle, the one at Leticia’s blog is a widget where you can highlight text)