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Fresh Pick
RIDER OF DRAGONS
📚 New Books This Week 📰 Latest News 🎪 Reader Games

BALLAD OF THE BLADE
By: Andrew P. Meritt

Serenade of Smoke #1
Independent
October 2025
On Sale: October 16, 2025
Kindle: B0FN6Q2FNT
e-Book
Add to Wish List

Horror | Fantasy Dark | Fantasy Epic

Magic is dead.

The Order made sure of that. They gathered it up, and what they couldn’t destroy, they hid. Now, noble houses squabble over the realm, civil unrest smolders in the east, slavery and injustice run rampant, all while mankind hides behind their two-faced gods.

However, the truth is, magic isn’t dead. It’s just been sleeping, and I intend to wake it.

Under the light of a sinister moon:

A promising initiate struggles to conform in an organization that wants to exterminate the very magic running in his blood. A hired assassin fights to stay one step ahead of shadows, betrayals, and past mistakes. A musician in over his head tries desperately to trade debt from one group of killers to another. A slave of blood and sand claws his way toward freedom, one corpse at a time. An irreverent Justiseer struggles with a particularly obstinate severed head. A man wakes with no memory, only to discover a community with problems far greater than his amnesia.

Each of them is forced to question if magic truly is dead and wonder…

Should it be?

Content Warning:

The language and imagery depicted in this novel are graphic in nature. If you have any triggers related to violent imagery or explicit language, please proceed with caution. If you would like a more extensive list of trigger warnings that include spoilers, please reach out.