A Vassal of Shadow

At the onset of an epic holy war, a young vassal will learn: If he wants to play games with gods, he must be prepared to lose everything.

Koven never thought he could catch the attention of a god. But after pulling off a daring theft from a noble house, he becomes too irresistible for Celdric--the god of mischief--to ignore.

Claimed as one of Celdric's vassals and granted the power to control shadows, Koven is whisked away to the Cenobium, an academy for those marked with the divine blood of the various Athearian deities. There, his destiny becomes entwined with those of a gifted seer, a shapeshifting prince, and a warrior descended from a bloodline plagued with madness. But gods don't share their power without a cost. Koven must first survive the academy's deadly exams.

Meanwhile, as tensions between rival gods reach an all-time high, Celdric concocts a scheme to make matters worse. Faced with a war that threatens to consume the continent, Koven and his friends must race across enemy territory in search of the goddess of fate before everything they know and love is destroyed.

And soon Koven finds himself battling more than man-eating monsters and bloodthirsty gods. Because there's a darkness festering inside him, and he isn't sure he can save himself, much less the kingdom . . .

The Name of the Wind meets Godkiller in this epic fantasy series, in which the whims of gods weave a deadly fate that's impossible to avoid.