Only the dead can save the living. In Albastine, the dead are made into mindless servants known as Attendants, incapable of harming the living unless commanded to by the soldier-necromancer Legates. Forced into an early retirement, Legate Gaius Cassius Calvus struggles to find purpose in his civilian life—until he is called upon to examine the apparent suicide of one of Albastine’s senators. Cassius’s necromantic powers reveal that the man was murdered—and the weapon used to kill him was an Attendant. Knowing that only another Legate could command an Attendant to kill, Cassius sets out to discover the truth behind the assassination. His investigation leads him through the foggy streets and brooding towers of Albastine as he slowly uncovers a conspiracy that threatens to shake the Pale City to its very foundations. Should he fail, the Republic he has sworn his life—and death—to serve falls with him. The Pale City combines the rich worldbuilding of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn novels with the first-person narration and magical mystery of Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files, flavored through with the necromantic horror of Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb series.

New Allies and Enemies Rise From the Ashes. In Albastine, dying in the Republic’s service is only the beginning. Charged with training the necromancer-generals responsible for leading the city-state’s undead legions, Cassius wants nothing more than to recover from his wounds, rebuild his marriage, and restore his faith in his ancestral religion. But when a separatist group starts to undermine the Republic from within, the shaken warrior finds himself on the front lines once more. Forced into an uneasy alliance with a magistrate who’s already tried to arrest him once, Cassius relentlessly pursues the heretic Sons of Ash and their charismatic leader in a struggle for the soul of his people. Yet as tensions rise, Cassius begins to fear that both he and the Sons are being manipulated by an unseen Adversary who will stop at nothing to restore the old balance of power. And all the while, unseen and unstoppable, a killer stalks the Pale City’s streets, seeking to send Cassius to his uneasy rest. An epic fantasy series perfect for fans of Gideon the Ninth. Rites of Resurrection is packed to the brim with zombies, magic, and mystery that will leave you flipping pages late into the night.

The Dead Are Waking Up. For three hundred years the Republic of Albastine’s dead have been resurrected as mindless servants who labor and wage war so that the living may focus on higher matters. Yet these Attendants are no longer the unthinking, unfeeling slaves they once were. Called from the duties of new parenthood to examine reports of malfunctioning Attendants, necromancer Cassius Calvus discovers that his actions the previous year have inadvertently called the spirits of the dead back into the bodies of the Attendants, resulting in self-aware revenants. Led by the silently charismatic being who calls himself Wraith, these Awoken threaten the Republic’s orderly society with their very existence. But the Awoken are not the only undead in the Pale City who are more than they appear. Throughout Albastine, a sinister force has been quietly gathering power in the shadows, corrupting the Attendants to its own ends. Hounded by an enemy long thought vanquished, Cassius and his allies are drawn into an epic battle for the fate of the Republic—and every soul within, living and dead alike.