Not even the ties of blood will stop them from splitting the world in two.
Burningblade and Silvereye is a Science Fantasy / High Fantasy trilogy by Django Wexler.
Centuries ago the Chosen and the ghouls waged an apocalyptic war against one another which saw both races apparently destroyed and their great empires smashed to rubble. Humanity was left to rebuild from the rubble, under the guidance of the Twilight Order, the heirs of the Chosen - but some would say that their guidance and protection is more like a prison. Gyre was eight when a centarch of the Twilight Order came to his farm and abducted his little sister to become part of the Order - scarring Gyre and putting out one of his eyes when he tried to stop him. Now an adult, Gyre has become a thief and scavenger in the city of Deepfire, always looking for some secret power he can use to bring the Twilight Order down. However, a job with a mysterious new partner will lead him to find things he never expected - and to discover that the dreaded ghouls may not be extinct after all. Meanwhile, his sister Maya is preparing to become a full centarch in her own right, but her latest mission will lead her to a conspiracy that reaches into the heart of the Order itself.
Eventually, the siblings' journeys will put them on opposite sides of a coming conflict, and their discoveries will shake the world itself.
This trilogy consists of:
- Ashes of the Sun (July 2020)
- Blood of the Chosen (October 2021)
- Emperor of Ruin (February 2023)
The Burningblade and Silvereye series contains examples of:
- After the End: The magically and technologically advanced empires of the Chosen and the ghouls obliterated each other four hundred years ago, leaving the world in ruins.
- All Your Powers Combined: The Corruptor is the only person known to have ever mastered both deiat and dhak.
- Always Chaotic Evil:
- Plaguespawn, of the "mindlessly animalistic" variety. They can be controlled by a skilled dhakim, but in their natural state they exist solely to consume living creatures to add to their own biomass, and it's noted they're so intent on their own kills that they won't even help other plaguespawn if they're in trouble.
- Ghouls are commonly believed to have been this. It's just Chosen propaganda. The ghouls are secretive and arrogant, and the hatred humanity and the Chosen have for them is mutual, but they're not really evil. Elariel in particular is perfectly pleasant, and even highlights some positive traits, like how she regularly heals anyone sick or injured because using their magic to prevent pain or suffering is essentially considered basic manners among the ghouls.
- Beneath the Earth: The ghouls were subterranean creatures; most of their empire was built underground and that's where their most intact ruins can be found, like beneath Deepfire and in the Refuge, the last living ghoul city.
- Big Bad: The Corruptor has been pulling strings from the shadows for centuries as part of his plan to return to the world and reclaim rule over it.
- Black Magic: The Ghoul magic, Dhak is generally seen this way. It can be used to control Plaugespawn and manipulate living things, and generally has some some horrific uses. Using the magic carries a death sentence, meaning practitioners are outlaws and generally dangerous. The magic can also be used for benevolent purposes like healing and bestowing physical enhancements, although more complex healing or modifications tend to be VERY painful. The Twilight Order has also expanded what is considered dhak to include essentially anything magical they don't control or produce directly, meaning lots of people have relatively innocuous and safe dhak.
- Body Horror: Dhak can be used to make things that are... unpleasant, to put it mildly. Most obvious are the plaguespawn, which actively absorb biomass from their victims and copy their body parts and so tend to look like horrific amalgamations of different creatures. Their creator, the Corruptor, is worse; he retains the upper body of a Chosen man but his lower body is an arachnoid horror that seems equal parts technological and organic. Prodominus snarks upon meeting him for the first time that he is "significantly uglier than I expected".
- Both Sides Have a Point: Growing up in the Twilight Order, Maya thinks they're humanity's last, best defense against plaguespawn and Dhakim. Gyre, having had his family ripped apart and his eye taken by the Order, generally thinks they're arrogant, self-righteous hypocrites oppressing humanity and holding it stagnant. Both regularly admit that their sibling has some valid points. The Order DOES help people and keeps the Republic relatively safe, but Maya does take significant issue with the attitudes and methods of some of her peers. The factionalized nature of the Order and the fact that centarchs have a lot of freedom in how they operate means that a given centarch might make a compelling case for either side of the argument.
- Brain Uploading: Per Naumoriel, this is how one controls the Leviathan - by transferring your consciousness into it. Subsequently exploited by Gyre as a way to save Kit's life when she's mortally wounded.
- Cain and Abel: Downplayed. Gyre and Maya are on opposite sides of the conflict about the future of human civilization and oppose each other repeatedly across the books - but it's also made clear that deep down, the siblings do still love each other and each has chances to kill the other that they won't take.
- Combat Clairvoyance: One of the powers granted by Gyre's dhak eye.
- Crystal Spires and Togas: Skyreach, capital of the Dawn Republic, is like this owing to its concentration of political power, wealth, and proximity to the Twilight Order allowing it a much higher prevalence of arcana than anywhere else in the world.
- Cyborg: Most ghoul constructs are weird meldings of flesh and technology.
- Dangerous Forbidden Technique: According to Elariel, using dhak techniques on yourself can have... unpleasant side-effects. This was apparently the Corruptor's downfall.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Naumoriel is the main antagonist of the first book, but is killed by the end of it. He and the overarching big bad, the Corruptor, have nothing to do with each other, and the Corruptor indicates that had Naumoriel's plan to merge with the Leviathan succeeded, they would have likely ended up at odds.
- Drunken Song: "Ashes of the Sun" includes the first verse of an in-universe one called "Tunnel Girl". Taken at face value, the song is about a young couple spelunking. Any reading of the subtext quickly reveals that the tunnel being explored is the one between the girl's legs.
- Elemental Powers: Deiat abilities often manifest this way, with different centarchs having different specialties. Maya's is fire.
- Enemy Mine: The climaxes of both of the first two books force Gyre and Maya to work together. Helps that they're siblings who, though they may disagree profoundly about... just about everything and are on opposite sides of most conflicts, they are siblings who still care about each other and don't, when the chips are down, actually want each other dead.
- Evil Sorcerer: Dhakim are people who use dhak. While dhak has benign uses, human dhakim are almost always pretty awful, probably in part because using it at all carries a death sentence in the Republic. Outside it some rare dhakim are accepted by their communities and simply act as healers.
- Exact Words: Gyre is furious when he discovered that Naumoriel intended to wipe out the Twilight Order as they'd agreed - but that he also intended to destroy the rest of humanity as collateral damage. Naumoriel just says that if Gyre had wanted humanity spared he should have bargained for that and not just assumed that's what Naumoriel would do.
- Expy: The Twilight Order is a Darker and Edgier take on the Prequel-era Jedi Order, confirmed by the author.
- Extreme Omnisexual: Kit will at least consider sleeping with just about anyone or anything. She complains that her inability to keep doing so is the worst part about merging with the Leviathan. Yes, in her current disembodied state she can't really feel sexual desire; it's the principle of the thing.
- Fantastic Racism: Plenty to go around. The ghouls and the Chosen despised one another mutually, and humans view ghouls as evil monsters (though they also think they're extinct). The surviving ghouls have largely - with some exceptions - transferred that hate to humanity, who they see as the Chosen's lackeys. Some centarchs also look down on humans without deiat abilities and consider themselves superior beings.
- Fantastic Rank System: Members of the Twilight Order can hold the rank of agathaios (trainees) centarch (full member of the order) and Kyrilliarch (members of the Order's governing council).
- Fiery Redhead: Maya is a passionate, driven person with bright red hair. Also literal; she has fire powers.
- Forced Transformation: The ghoul Elariel is transformed into a human via dhak and sent on a dangerous mission with Gyre as part of her punishment for helping Naumoriel.
- Functional Magic: Two kinds. Deiat is the hereditary power usable by the Chosen and some humans, primarily involving the manipulation of various forms of energy. Dhak involves manipulating living creatures; its greatest masters were the ghouls but, according to Elariel, it can be learned by anyone (though it can be very dangerous to try and master when you don't know what you're doing). Both kinds have associated magitek as well.
- Hidden Elf Village: The Refuge, known to humans as the Tomb, is the last inhabited ghoul city. They take great pains to stay hidden from outsiders.
- Laser Blade: Centarchs wield blades they manifest with deiat energy, with the specific type of energy varying from centarch to centarch.
- Last of His Kind: The Corruptor claims to be the last of the Chosen. Though just how Chosen he even is any more is... debatable.
- Legacy Character: Certain famous cognomen can get passed on from one person to another. Kit, for example, is the second Doomseeker, and all centarchs are assigned a cognomen upon achieving that rank, typically one that's been on use and passed down for centuries and has an illustrious history (technically you can get a 'virgin' cognomen that's never been used before, but it's generally a sign the Kyrilliarchs have very little faith in your abilities).
- Long-Lived: Ghouls can live for centuries; Naumoriel is old enough to have been a child during the war with the Chosen (so he's a bit over four hundred) and though he's old by his people's standards, he doesn't seem to be particularly close to the end of his life and other members of the ghoul ruling council are even older. Similarly, the Chosen also seem to have been long-lived, though how long hasn't been specified.
- Luke Nounverber: Names like this are common. Justified in that they're not family names but rather cognomen - actual descriptive epithets earned by one's deeds. By the end of the first book, our protagonists are Gyre Silvereye and Maya Burningblade, respectively.
- Mage Species: The Chosen seem to have been this; apparently, they could all use deiat, and according to popular belief humans can only use deiat if they have some degree of Chosen ancestry.
- Magic Knight: Centarchs are supposed to be this, trained in both combat and deiat; Gyre notes, however, that many of them rely too much on their powers and don't keep up their mundane combat skills as much as they should.
- Magical Society: The Twilight Order is composed of all known deiat users in the Republic; as we see with Maya and Gyre's backstory, they don't take 'no' for an answer when recruiting.
- Magitek: The Chosen and ghouls each left their own flavor behind. The former are mostly machines comparable (or superior) to modern technology that run on deiat energy; the latter are weird meldings of the organic and inanimate achieved by dhak.
- The Magocracy: Downplayed. The Twilight Order doesn't rule the Dawn Republic, but with their monopoly on deiat and Chosen arcana, they certainly wield a lot of influence over it and it's a commonly held belief that they're the real power.
- Mini-Mecha: Naumoriel rides around in one. It's apparently the transport of choice for elderly and/or important ghouls.
- Mole in Charge: Partway through Blood of the Chosen, Maya learns that Prodominus, a ranking Kyrilliarch and one of the Twilight Order's de facto leaders, has been working with the ghouls to undermine the Order. Subverted; this is a lie. Prodominus was actually working to uncover the Corruptor's agents who had infiltrated the order, and the source of the tip against him was, in fact, the Corruptor himself.
- Monster Protection Racket: The primary source of plaguespawn for the past several centuries has been members of the Twilight Order under the influence of the Corrupter, mainly so that they can continue to justify the existence of an Order whose job is to protect the public from the plaguespawn. After the Corrupter is killed, Maya notes to herself that now that nobody is making more of them, eventually the plaguespawn will be reduced in number to levels where the Order is no longer necessary.
- No Nudity Taboo: Ghouls have full-body fur which provides both warmth and covering and consequently don't really get the concept of "clothes."
- Non-Heteronormative Society: Maya only shows interest in same-gender relationships, Kit seems to be open to basically anything, while all Gyre's love interests are opposite gender. A similar range is reflected across the various other characters and generally speaking this is all treated as entirely normal and largely not remarked upon.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Elariel's skills with dhak far exceed any human dhakim, but by ghoul standards she's nothing out of the ordinary and doesn't seem to be much more than a kid by the standards of her long-lived race.
- Oh, My Gods!: In addition to real-world swears, people in the Dawn Republic and Splinter Kingdoms use 'plague' and 'dhak' as curses.
- Our Ghouls Are Creepier: One of the setting's two Precursor races; ghouls are tall, thin, furry humanoids who possesses great faculty with biological science and dhak. They're generally believed to be Always Chaotic Evil and extinct. Neither of these, as it happens, are true. It should also be noted that 'ghoul' is what humans call them; their name for themselves apparently can't be pronounced properly with a human mouth.
- Playing with Fire: Maya's deiat abilities almost always manifest as fire, which eventually earns her the cognomen 'Burningblade'.
- Portal Network: The Dawn Republic (and some places further afield, like Deepfire) is crisscrossed with a network of 'gates' that allow instantaneous travel. Because they need deiat to activate, the Twilight Order has a monopoly on their use.
- Power Limiter: It eventually turns out that the arcana crystal implanted in Maya's chest actually limits how much deiat she can draw at a time. This was necessary to save her life, as it keeps her from drawing enough power to trigger the Plague's lethal stage, which targets deiat users above a certain level of power.
- Puppeteer Parasite: At various points across the first two books, characters encounter small, black spider-like creatures that can attach themselves to humans and control their bodies. They're dhak constructs and minions of the Corruptor, working to carry out his will and prepare for his return.
- The Remnant: The Refuge, a single, small city-state, is all that remains of the once continent-spanning ghoul empire.
- Scavenger World: There's a roaring trade in magical or technological artifacts (collectively called arcana) left behind from the Chosen-ghoul war. The author has noted he deliberately wanted to create this kind of setting - one where the lost 'golden age' is still close enough in history for the world to be littered with relics from a more advanced civilization.
- Science Fantasy: A post-apocalyptic setting where magic and technology intermix freely, and are often indistinguishable from one another.
- Schizo Tech: Because humans can use Chosen or ghoul arcana but can't make it, the tech level can vary wildly across the continent depending on what local people have been able to find and put to use, with the Twilight Order and their allies in the Dawn Republic generally having the best stuff.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Voluntary sealing, as it happened. The Corruptor sealed himself in a secret underground chamber to protect himself from being killed by the Plague. Once it's cured, he's happy to let himself out.
- Shrouded in Myth: The ghoul-Chosen war. As you could probably guess based on the fact that Humans know one side as "The Chosen" and the other as "ghouls", their sources are incredibly one sided on top of being fragmented as best. Even general information like how the war started, what is was over, and how it ended isn't really known. When Gyre is exposed to Ghoul sources that contradict traditional human belief he's not particularly surprised and believes it readily, although there's every indication that ghoul sources are just as biased in the opposite direction.
- Slave Race: The ghouls accuse humanity of having been this to the Chosen.
- Training the Gift of Magic: Though deiat powers are inborn, using them well requires extensive training.
- Traumatic Superpower Awakening: When Maya's deiat powers manifested as a child, she began to suffer from serious illness until the Order saved her life with arcana. It turns out she was gifted enough to approach the threshold where a deiat user becomes powerful enough to trigger the Plague.
- Uneven Hybrid: Apparently at some point Chosen blood got into the general human population; most people only have traces of it, but sometimes you get throwbacks who have enough Chosen heritage to use deiat.
- Unwitting Pawn: Both main characters end up duped into doing the dirty work for major villains:
- In Ashes of the Sun, Naumoriel tricks Gyre and Kit into helping him reactivate the Leviathan, which as the power to wipe out humanity.
- In Blood of the Chosen, Maya is conned into curing the Plague which allows the Corruptor to return.
- Verbal Tic: Early in the first book, Maya confronts a dhakim who has a habit of repeating important words in a sentence. When her mentor Jaedia starts talking the same way, it's a sign that she's possessed by the same entity he was, which Maya realizes basically immediately.
- World of Technicolor Hair: Weird hair colors are common among humans of this setting (including blue, green, purple, and shades of red that don't normally occur in Earth humans). It's implied this is the result of interbreeding with the Chosen.
