Last to Rise: Book 3 of the Rojan Dizon Novels

Description

The towering vertical city of Mahala is on the brink of war with its neighbouring countries. It might be his worst nightmare, but Rojan and the few remaining pain-mages have been drafted in to help. The city needs power in whatever form they can get it - and fast. With alchemists readying a prototype electricity generator, and factories producing guns faster than ever, the city's best advantage is still the mages. Leading the alchemists is Rojan's sister, with a risky plan to help tap the mages' strength and overcome the armies marching towards them. With food in the city running out, and a battle approaching that no one is ready for, risky is the best they've got. . .

Francis Knight was born and lives in Sussex, UK. She has held a variety of jobs from being a groom in the Balearics, where she punched a policeman and got away with it, to an IT administrator. When not living in her own head, she enjoys SFF geekery, WWE geekery, teaching her children Monty Python quotes and boldly going and seeking out new civilisations.

Knight's Rojan Dizon trilogy conclusion presses its growing cast of characters into intense moments of loyalty and sacrifice to close with a sharp turn into darker, more rewarding territory. The Storad, whose attack on the corrupt and crumbling city of Mahala concluded Before the Fall, have the city under siege, the wealthy bribing their way to safety while the poor fend off starvation on a diet of rat meat. Pain mage Rojan Dizon doesn't care for the theocratic oligarchy, but he joins forces with his brother, Perak, the Archdeacon of Mahala, to save a city that Rojan would happily see destroyed. As cynical, wisecracking Rojan desperately counters the Storad onslaught, Knight forces him to mature. With Rojan's best friend anchoring him to humanity on one side and his exhausting, bloody, agonizing magic driving him closer to insanity on the other, the novel takes on a propulsive, fractured energy that mirrors Rojan and Mahala's increasingly frantic struggle for survival. The series, which has grown in complexity since the beginning, reaches a profoundly moving conclusion that is both unexpected and entirely satisfying. - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY A worthy conclusion to an intriguing debut trilogy - Wertzone