Call him the Kickstarter-Killing King… Author Shawn Speakman launched a Kickstarter campaign yesterday for his upcoming fantasy novel The King-Killing Queen — in partnership with Skybound and Grim Oak Press — and was funded in just 11 minutes! Skybound also launched a companion graphic novel, The Briar-Sword Monk. Information about both books can be found on the Kickstarter campaign page. You can check out the King-Killing Queen‘s wraparound cover, along with several pages of art from the graphic novel after this official description of what is Skybound’s first-ever prose novel…
In this first book of a new trilogy author Anna Smith Spark calls “a dark love letter to high fantasy,” a woman discovers her unknown past carries with it a terrible future.
When Alafair Goode lay wounded during his quest to destroy Mordreadth the Great Darkness, a witch magicked and saved the future High King’s life to fulfill his destiny. Thereafter, the High King and all those born to his line may only be undone by natural death.
Decades later, Sylvie Raventress is the devoted apprentice to Master Historian Kell, stepbrother to the High King. It is a life of scholarly pursuit and privilege where one day she will take her instructor’s place and write her own histories. But beside Alafair’s deathbed, Sylvie and his scions learn a surprising truth—she is no orphan, but is the High King’s heir. Worse, when he dies, the witch’s curse is no more, leaving all the king’s children vulnerable.
With her siblings loathing Sylvie’s selection and vying for her throne, she must rely on a Fae guide, a disgraced former First Knight, and a cantankerous light-weaver to restore the fracturing kingdom and become High Queen.
And yet the thing none of them know is destiny has its own part to play, too. For the witch saved Alafair Goode for her own reasons…
