A Canticle of Two Souls by Steven Raaymakers

Ancient forces move in the shadows, calling in debts and striking deals. Meanwhile, from the rainy streets of Lirin to the scorching dunes of the Mondaer Desert, the ripples of her actions have inadvertently broken a chain of events five centuries in the making. Helped along the way by a grouchy old doctor, a boisterous group of nobles, and a well-meaning assassin, Elenor is forced to dance between duty and defiance as she tries to save her kingdom.

There's only one problem-the king is her father. When the King of Lirin murders Elenor's brother during a failed coup attempt, she must choose between turning a blind eye to her people's suffering or joining the rebellion and helping bring down the tyrant king. In order to reclaim it, she must risk entering The Chaos Circus: a citywide fair where mortals trade years for prizes in vicious attractions from which the Deathless draw their power.īut there's a catch: if Tessa can't defeat the Deathless at their own freakish carnival games, she will lose her mind.and Nicolai will lose his life.įorced to rely on one another despite the secrets that come between them, Tessa and Nicolai embark on a dangerous adventure through the deceptively beautiful life of the Circus, where little is as it seems-even the games, their pasts, and the strange whirlwind of memories that Tessa can no longer recall. Spirited away by a devilishly charming Nicolai to the Mirror Lands- a parallel reality manipulated by the immortal Deathless- Tessa loses one of the most precious tethers to her sanity. But when a commission at her new reporting job forces her into the path of a not-quite-human murder suspect, Tessa finds that the unordinary is not through with her yet. After a stint in a mental asylum, she's had quite enough of being anything else, thank you very much.

All Tessa LaRoche wants is to be the most ordinary person on Barrow Island.

A Canticle of Two Souls by Steven Raaymakers