The Tower of Living and Dying
core novel 2018 Empires of Dust
Record
| First published | 2018 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.87 (967 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 514 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780008204112 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
The Tower of Living and Dying continues the Empires of Dust trilogy after the fall of the Sekemleth Empire depicted in The Court of Broken Knives, following Marith Altrersyr as he rises to claim a throne of his own. Having survived the conspiracy and bloodshed of the first book, Marith's ascent to kingship is shadowed by his own violent history and the trail of death that follows him, as former allies and enemies alike are forced to reckon with what kind of ruler he is becoming. The novel keeps the grimdark, multi-perspective style of the first book while narrowing its focus increasingly onto Marith's uneasy hold on power and the cost, to himself and those around him, of the path that brought him there.
Where it sits
- Universe: Empires of Dust
- Series: Empires of Dust core; position 2 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Anna Smith Spark
Notes
- From the series record (Empires of Dust): Completed trilogy; all 3 published by HarperVoyager (UK).
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 Empires of Dust: position 2 of 3: previous The Court of Broken Knives (2017) · next The House of Sacrifice (2019)
Sources
← Empires of Dust dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.