“Compelling and slyly funny…a great imaginative plot leading like a track through forests.”
—Melody Kemp, author of Tree Crime.
It takes a teenage princess, a dissolute prince, and a dragon to show the world how to live in harmony with nature.
And there’s never been a dragon like this one in all of fantasy literature.
No one knows where the Dragon Uln came from. In fact, many people in The Gyre think she’s a myth.
But when Emperor TerGhahn enslaves her, everybody is in for a rude awakening. Using the dragon’s power, TerGhahn wants to conquer all the Gyre countries, including Pengellar, the breadbasket of the Gyre.
Unfortunately Pengellar’s most likely champion, Prince Antar, disappeared twenty years ago with the Blade of Pengellar and is presumed dead. The unwilling heir to the throne is Antar’s niece, fifteen-year-old Princess Arenee, an animal lover who resolves to help the Dragon Uln by any means necessary. In the process she invents a new kind of magic.
Will it be enough to withstand the imperial assault and return the Gyre to balance?
Valerie Brown spent her young adulthood as a professional musician in the club culture of Portland, Oregon. Later she earned a master’s degree in journalism. There ensued 25 years of environmental writing, particularly in environmental health, climate, microbiology, and various aspects of nuclear waste and radiation exposure.
She has been recognized by her peers for her explanatory writing. She returned to creative writing during the pandemic, when she completed The Prodigal’s War. She lives in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.