Love in Dark Settings

When Corbin is taken hostage by York, the King of Fossenvita, he refuses to surrender to the sadistic King's demands that would allow York to win the war between the world's two kingdoms. Only thus, Corbin believes, can he help the petties of Tascania, on whose behalf Tascanian nobles such as himself are fighting the Fossenvites. Rather than lose his honor, Corbin accepts York's "gift": a wounding that will prevent him from ever again fighting with his blade.

But Corbin lives in a world that has been at war for generations, in which only the nobles who command the battles and raids are considered to have honor. Stripped of his title and his ability to fight, Corbin begins to see that the petties alone may hold the answer of how he should live his life. Maimed as he is, though, Corbin cannot seek answers from the petties unless he receives the help of one man: York's son Firmin, who has warned Corbin that he will betray him.

He had made it more than clear during the past three years that he considered me a frail creature, incapable of enduring the hardened life of a soldier. But, then, his opinion was shared by all in the Tascanian Army.

What can you give a slave who, by law, can own nothing? . . . A 2008 holiday gift story for Dusk Peterson's readers.

He could not leave this room without his father's permission. And he could not imagine going to his father and saying, "Please let me go gather moss so that my slave can have a proper New Year for once."

He has taken a blood vow to the Jackal God to bring freedom to his land by killing Koretia's greatest enemy. But what will he do when the enemy becomes his friend?

Thrust into exile and pain, young Andrew has no choice but to accept the friendship of the very person he had vowed to kill. When he returns with his friend to his homeland fifteen years later, though, he finds himself in a land of conflicting loyalties . . . where a vengeful god awaits him.

This novel is part of The Three Lands, a fantasy series set in a multicultural world where conflicts over law and spirituality provide opportunities for friendship and romance, and for betrayal.

I had come to tell him, in the cheerful manner boys have, that our world was about to be destroyed.