Waiting on Wednesday – Skullsworn by Brian Staveley

Waiting on Wednesday is a meme hosted by Breaking the Spine to let us share our excitement for books coming out soon.

I really enjoyed Staveley’s Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne Trilogy, and have to admit, I found a number of his secondary characters fascinating. I am so looking forward to this standalone that will focus on Pyrre (who was one of those characters I really wanted to know more about!)

Skullsworn by Brian Staveley
Also by this author: The Emperor's Blades, The Providence of Fire
Published by Tor Books on April 25th 2017
Pages: 496

   

Brian Staveley’s new standalone returns to the critically acclaimed Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne universe, following a priestess attempting to join the ranks of the God of Death.
Pyrre Lakatur doesn’t like the word skullsworn. It fails to capture the faith and grace, the peace and beauty of her devotion to the God of Death. She is not, to her mind, an assassin, not a murderer–she is a priestess. At least, she will be a priestess if she manages to pass her final trial.
The problem isn’t the killing. Pyrre has been killing and training to kill, studying with some of the most deadly men and women in the world, since she was eight. The problem, strangely, is love. To pass her Trial, Pyrre has ten days to kill the ten people enumerated in an ancient song, including “the one you love / who will not come again.”
Pyrre is not sure she’s ever been in love. If she were a member of a different religious order, a less devoted, disciplined order, she might cheat. The Priests of Ananshael, however, don’t look kindly on cheaters. If Pyrre fails to find someone to love, or fails to kill that someone, they will give her to the god.
Pyrre’s not afraid to die, but she hates to quit, hates to fail, and so, with a month before her trial begins, she returns to the city of her birth, the place where she long ago offered an abusive father to the god and abandoned a battered brother—in the hope of finding love…and ending it on the edge of her sword.
“A complex and richly detailed world filled with elite soldier-assassins, mystic warrior monks, serpentine politics, and ancient secrets.” —Library Journal, starred review, on The Emperor’s Blades