In a fracturing empire spread across savage seas, two young people from different cultures find common purpose. A nameless girl is the lone survivor when her village is massacred by biomancers, mystical servants of the emperor. Named after her lost village, Bleak Hope is secretly trained by a master Vinchen warrior as an instrument of vengeance. A boy becomes an orphan on the squalid streets of New Laven and is adopted by one of the most notorious women of the criminal underworld, given the name Red, and trained as a thief and con artist. When a ganglord named Deadface Drem strikes a bargain with the biomancers to consolidate and rule all the slums of New Laven, the worlds of Hope and Red come crashing together, and their unlikely alliance takes them further than either could have dreamed possible.

A killer adventure fantasy follow-up to HOPE AND RED, set in a fracturing empire spread across savage seas, where two young people from different cultures find common purpose. Red is being trained as a cold-blooded assassin by the biomancers. As he becomes increasingly embroiled in palace politics, he learns that even life among the nobility can be deadly. While terrorizing imperial ships as the pirate Dire Bane, Hope stumbles onto a biomancer plot of such horrifying scope that it makes even the massacre of her childhood village seem small in comparison. With the biomancers tightening their grip of fear over the empire, Hope and Red struggle to fill their new roles and responsibilities, but the cost will be greater than any of them realize.

The thrilling conclusion to Jon Skovron's adventure fantasy series, two young people from a fracturing empire spread across savage seas must find a way to keep their nation together. Still reeling from the events at Dawn's Light, Hope struggles to understand what it means to be a warrior who has vowed to never again take up a sword. Red is enjoying his new role as imperial spy. Perhaps a bit too much. But his loyalties will be tested when his employer, Lady Hempist, relents and assigns him the one task he's been begging for all along: recruiting Hope and Brigga Lin to help rid the empire of biomancery once and for all. Fate brought them together; it will tear their empire apart. The Empire of Storms Hope and Red Bane and Shadow Blood and Tempest