
The Second Empire
core novel 2000 The Monarchies of God
Record
| First published | 2000 |
|---|---|
| Original language | |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.98 (998 ratings, collected 2026-08-26) |
| Page count | 304 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780575065741 |
| Internal chronology | 4 |
Synopsis
The fourth Monarchies of God novel continues directly from the escalating three-front crisis of The Iron Wars, as the Merduk invasion presses deeper into the western kingdoms and the schism within the Ramusian Church further destabilizes what remains of the old order. Corfe Cear-Inaf, risen from the sole survivor of Aekir's fall to a commander in his own right, continues to shoulder both the military defense of the fracturing western realms and the political intrigue swirling around any leader who accumulates real power in wartime. Sea captain Richard Hawkwood's discoveries across the ocean, meanwhile, add a further complication to a world already straining under invasion, heresy, and civil war, as the series moves its many storylines toward the more openly apocalyptic conflicts of its final volumes.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Monarchies of God
- Series: The Monarchies of God core; position 4 of 5 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Paul Kearney
Notes
- From the series record (The Monarchies of God): A five-novel epic fantasy sequence set in a continent modelled loosely on Renaissance-era Europe, following a sea captain, kings, and a religious purge across a sustained secondary-world war.
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 Monarchies of God: position 4 of 5: previous The Iron Wars (1999) · next Ships from the West (2002)
Sources
- The Monarchies of God series bibliography (specialised genre-fiction site)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchies_of_God
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