Jame is one of the last of the Kencyrath line, born to battle a world-destroying Lord of Darkness and resuscitate her ancestral heritage. Jame’s youth was spent hard and low in a desert wasteland. Now she has discovered her past and her heritage as Highborn—and, with it, the power to call souls out of their bodies and slay the occasional god or two (as well as to resurrect them). First, though, Jame must survive the politics and dangers of haunted Tentir College, a school for warriors where she’s a student. At Tentir, Jame saves a young protégé from possession by a powerful, evil soul in search of a body, while combating jealous students who see her as a danger to their ambition for power and want her expelled—and blinded and dead, in the bargain! To make matters worse, she’s challenged to a mounted combat duel to decide who is Tentir “top gun”—a competition she must win to graduate. It’s trial by fire, as Jame moves closer to a magnificent destiny she both fears—and knows she must face

When Jame returned to Knorth hall to help her brother Torisen name all the fallen fighters’ death banners stored there, she made the disturbing discovery that those banners splattered with their owners’ blood also have trapped their owners’ souls. She also found a contract proving her cousin Kindrie to be legitimate, proving that there are three full-blooded Knorth. Three full-blooded Knorth means that the Three-Faced God can be manifested—something that none of the three are likely to want to do, if they have any choice in the matter. . Returning with this unwelcome knowledge to school at Tentir, Jame continued to dodge the attentions of an unwanted admirer, strengthen her link to her feline hunting ounce, work with the rathorn colt Death’s-head to insure that it doesn’t resume its attempts to kill her, and, of course, kept causing plenty of unintended havoc. She also had to help fight off attacks from hillmen, repel a stampede of yarkcarn (think warthogs the size of mammoths), fight in the Winter War (a mock conflict—or, at least, that’s how it was supposed to be), and solve the mystery behind the death of her evil uncle, who somehow is still spectrally manifesting himself in nasty ways. No doubt about it—Jame is back, and with a vengeance, as the popular and critically-praised fantasy adventure series continues

Kothifir the Great, ruled by an obscenely obese god-king, peopled with colorful, dueling guilds, guarded by the Southern Host of the Kencyrath. Here Jame arrives, only to find that the turbulent city claims more of her attention as the Talisman than the Host’s training fields do as a second year randon cadet. Mysteries abound: Caravans plunge deep into the hostile Southern Wastes and return laden with fabulous riches—from what source, and why do they crumble to dust if not claimed by the god-king’s touch? Karnids from Urakarn prowl the shadows, preaching the return of their mysterious prophet. An unstable Kencyr temple rumbles in the outer, decayed rings of the city. Then too, someone in the Host’s camp is trying to get Jame killed. In order to save the present, Jame must search the past, be it fifteen years ago when as a boy her brother Torisen arrived here, unknown and unwanted, or three thousand years ago when the Wastes were a great sea ringed with rich civilizations. Somehow, Tori survived. Somehow, the cities of the plain were destroyed in one catastrophic night. Now Kothifir's gods have lost their power and its proud towers are falling. What curse out of the past has struck it? Jame, a potential Nemesis, must try to stop the destruction—without undoing time itself