clever, and balancing playful narrative ambition with the traditional pleasures of its genre, Goldsmith's ambitious fantasy, her debut, centers storytelling itself as an act of heroism, bringing pleasure and imagination to those who dwell in the novel's many taverns but also something deeper."

PW/Booklife Review

"An imaginative, if somewhat dense, epic with meticulous worldbuilding."

Kirkus Reviews

The dragons are stirring. Only the hope of one man can keep them at bay.

Nearly half a century after the methodical slaughter of the rookes who wandered the land of

Aerda, weaving stories and inspiring the citizens of the growing empire, only one rooke remains.

It has long been his duty, a task he traded his name for, to spread the tales that keep the

dragons in a peaceful slumber.

When the Seven Aspects of the Relic task him with the quest of rekindling the hope and respect

that once accompanied the role of a rooke among the people of Aerda, he must decide

whether or not to risk everything to stop the destruction that accompanies dragons when they

awake. But Imperial spies still linger in the dark, and news of a remaining Rooke travels fast. It

will take all the skill of the Rooke and his friends to evade the Spytes clamoring to put an end to

his stories.