Manacled

How it reads

Manacled is fantasy (dark alternate-universe fantasy, specifically), and its dominant mood is dark. It goes to difficult places and doesn't look away. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in an invented world, in no single period, told in the third person, staying close to one character. Its central concerns are war, survival and redemption. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is bittersweet: it resolves, but at a price. At 925 pages it's a real commitment. It's a mega-bestseller — the book everyone seems to have read.