Bücher von Jonathan Weiss

Pillars of steel stand scattered across the dunes of the Droughtlands, left behind by those-of-glass. They're the markers of a people long extinct, wiped out by a fusion of unbound magic and unfathomable technology. The remnants of humanity who now dwell upon the desert wastes regard these places with suspicion, yet the temptation of forbidden knowledge is too strong a draw for the crews sent out by the Academy of Breggesa. At the age of twenty, freshly initiated Rettic jumps at the chance to join one such expedition, even if it means ignoring the whispered doubts of the rest of the crew. At the helm is Archarus, a venerated scholar and sole survivor of the last crew the Academy sent to their destination, hell bent on keeping the details of his current mission secret. As mutinous mutters continue to grow, Rettic starts to wonder if they'll meet the same fate as the failed expedition. With the chance to make a name for himself in the Academy, Rettic conducts his own investigation into the fate of Archarus' last venture. It takes him into the depths of the massive towers, deep under the sands, where a rumbling voice older than the ruins themselves returns a warning. You control machines.This machine will control life.Do not control it.

A THOUSAND YEARS AGO THE HYTHARO WERE WIPED OUT.A THOUSAND YEARS LATER SPIRIC WAS SPARED.Lost among the dune-swept ruins of ancient glass towers, 14-year-old Spiric hunts for his stolen memories. Guided by the exiled scholar that found him, he embarks on a perilous journey across the Droughtlands to uncover his origins.He's told his red eyes mark him as a Hytharo, one of the long-extinct storm callers that sealed all water into the air itself before they were erased from history. In the thousand years since, thirst has been quenched simply by breathing, but that hasn't stopped the surviving runic peoples from wanting water any less.For without it, there's no ink, no runes, no magic, and in the vast desert wastes of the Droughtlands, magic means power.To Spiric, the mantra is eerily familiar.Word of his presence ripples across the Droughtlands and pressure mounts on him to reverse the Hytharo's final, sacrificial act. It's only as his memories begin to return that he realises the true reason his people were wiped out.With the fragments of Spiric's memories growing bloodier and more desperate, he must determine whether carrying out his supposed fate will cause history to repeat, or if he can forge a new destiny, both for himself and the Droughtlands.

As the freshest conscript aboard the walking fortress of Revance, Ryza forges a name for himself in battle. The enemy are the smelters, bandits that trade in reanimated corpses. But for Ryza, the bloodshed represents a path of redemption for an upbringing he's just escaped. His prowess with a rifle draws the interest of the Locusts, a clandestine faction within Revance's ranks. It turns out that not all aboard the fortress seek to stamp out the plague of molten flux, the mysterious liquid metal that fills the bodies of the dead and makes them walk again. Some seek to profit. The reanimated corpses -known as autominds- are used to control enormous contraptions of magnetically enchanted metal, forming the backbone of The Droughtland's factories. The only thing stopping the smelters from expanding their illicit industry is Revance. The Locusts make Ryza an offer. Either help overthrow Revance to do the smelter's bidding or reveal his father's legacy as the very thing Ryza now fights against. The former is unthinkable. The latter means death. Ryza resolves to infiltrate them and expose the mutiny, plunging him back into the murky underworld of the smelters, testing his convictions, and even leading him to the ancient origins of molten flux itself.