House of Open Wounds
core novel 2023 The Tyrant Philosophers
Record
| First published | 2023 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.51 (4,943 ratings, collected 2026-08-30) |
| Page count | 608 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781035901388 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
House of Open Wounds, the second novel in the Tyrant Philosophers series, follows Yasnic, a priest serving a minor and largely powerless god, after he is conscripted into an experimental medical unit attached to the occupying Palleseen forces during a brutal siege. The unit is staffed by so-called Incorrect practitioners, healers whose unsanctioned magical methods the officially rationalist Palleseen regime condemns in principle but tolerates in practice because they work. Among Yasnic's new colleagues is Graue, who heals the wounded by taking their pain into himself. Set against the ongoing occupation begun in the first book, the novel follows this uneasy company of misfits as they are pushed to the front lines of the Palleseen war effort, exposing the contradictions of an empire that relies on the very magic it claims to be eradicating.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Tyrant Philosophers
- Series: The Tyrant Philosophers core; position 2 of 4 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Notes
- From the series record (The Tyrant Philosophers): A sequence of loosely connected novels following the Palleseen, a militarised empire of ideological "perfectionists", as their occupation spreads across a series of very different cities. Each book largely follows new viewpoint characters in a new setting, tied together by the Palleseen war machine and a recurring cast of officers and agents rather than one single continuous plot.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Tyrant Philosophers: position 2 of 4: previous City of Last Chances (2022) · next Days of Shattered Faith (2024)
Sources
← The Tyrant Philosophers dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.