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One-Liner
A disgraced magistrate fights to regain his law license and uncovers a 50-year conspiracy to control the legal system (Adult fantasy, 106,000 words).
Read If You Like…
- Courtroom dramas
- Legal thrillers
- Fantasy Noir
- A bit of mystery
- Skyships!
- Gay MCs, love interests, and LGBTQ rep
- Very slow-burn romance (coworkers to lovers)
- Love triangles
- Heists
- Happy endings
Plot Summary
Talio Rossa was an unconventional magistrate in the four cities, until his wife found him in bed with another man and someone stole his most valuable possession, his magistrate’s codex. He lost everything at once: his marriage, his reputation, and his career.
With no prospects and no hope, he fled the four cities and went back to the only other work he knew: scavenging the magical mineral that powers the cities’ skyships. For ten years he’s been searching and digging, ten long years dreaming of returning to the law.
Then his ex-wife shows up with an offer: If he helps her family out in a complicated murder case, she’ll get his record cleared. It’s the perfect opportunity for Talio to get his legal career going again. All he has to do is win an impossible case, defending a man who refuses to say he’s innocent. And when sparks fly between them, all the more reason to get him acquitted.
Then he has to get his career back on track, when nobody will hire him. Finally, he’s got to figure out who set him up for scandal a decade earlier. Because it was definitely a setup. There’s a legal conspiracy that’s had their eye on Talio for his entire career, and this time, they’re quite ready to kill him to protect their secret.
Publishing Links
- Publisher: Space Wizard Science Fantasy
- Publication Date: July 16, 2024
- Keep Informed: Sign up for notifications about the Kickstarter
- Buy: Preorder!
- Goodreads: Here!
Content Warnings
Note: This is a legal fantasy thriller – fantasy noir. I usually write cozy or cozy-adjacent fantasy, so you might want to take a look at these content warnings…
- Angst (intense emotional scenes)
- Discrimination (religious and sexual orientation/gender)
- Dubious consent
- Explicit sex scenes
- Infidelity
- Murder (not onscreen, but there’s a homicide trial)
- Cultural/Religious conflict
- Social stigma (facial scarring)
- Suicide (mention)
- Substance use (alcohol, alcoholism)
- Violence (two brief attempts on one character’s life)
- That said, there’s a happy ending – promise!
Excerpt
Talio Rossa’s dowsing rod jerked sideways.
He looked up from the spot where he’d been concentrating. All the other scavengers were bent over their own long, narrow strips of pale blue mineral. None had reacted. This was his discovery alone, then. If he could trust the magic in the dowsing rod.
He knew every bit of his rectangular strip of merinite. False merinite, rather. Absolutely worthless, found in abundance, and identical in every way to the priceless specks of true merinite that could still be found here and there. The dowsing rod would only react to true merinite. Talio hadn’t seen it twitch this violently in years.
He rubbed his aching lower back and looked past the roped-off sections of false merinite, into the forest beyond. A ragged line of stones inscribed with runes marked the boundary. Talio could just make out the creatures and beasts beyond the translucent barrier. A hovering wyvern. A half-human, half-dragon creature banging its head against the shimmering wall. An immense coiled snake watching him with intent eyes. And beyond them, the Impassable Forest. The bodies of the mages. And if he strained his eyes, Talio could even see the old Royal Palace. The last remnants of the War of the Cities. Live creatures, dead mages and a crumbling palace imprisoned in the Impassable Forest for all time.
Talio bent down again and passed the dowsing rod carefully along the watery-blue merinite. And then the rod touched a woman’s beaded dress. He looked up and his former wife, Gawani, stood before him.