The war with the Wasp Empire has ended in a bitter stalemate, and Collegium has nothing to show for it but wounded veterans. Cheerwell Maker finds herself crippled in ways no doctor can mend, haunted by ghosts of the past that she cannot appease and seeking meaning in a city that no longer feels like home.
The Empress Seda is regaining control over those imperial cities that refused to bow the knee to her, but she draws her power from something more sinister than mere armies and war machines. Only her consort, the former spymaster Thalric, knows the truth, and now the assassins are coming and he finds his life and his loyalties under threat once again.
Out beyond the desert of the Nem the ancient city of Khanaphes awaits them both, with a terrible secret entombed beneath its stones.
Summary: The Scarab Path by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a great new start to the next arc of the Shadows of the Apt series. With a slightly narrowed focus, a couple of big mysteries, and who’d have guessed it, another siege, Tchaikovsky plays to his strengths and sets the stage to come without losing sight of a great experience.
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Writings of a Doomscribe 