Under the Iron Sky

The first book in a fantasy trilogy, the story is set on the planet Vordell, a civilization powered by Light, an energy source harvested from three suns through glass panels called Sunflowers. The novel opens with a recovered video diary from the late Queen Aleena Savros, the last monarch of the Vordellian empire, recorded fourteen days before catastrophic cracks split the planet open. Aleena begs forgiveness for a grave secret: She used a magical artifact called the Arch to banish an entire civilization underground nearly two centuries earlier, and these trapped creatures are enraged.

Eleven-year-old Soraya Tollmere is preparing to portray Aleena in a jubilee play when the ancient queen collapses and dies during the ceremony, triggering a massive earthquake. Monstrous creatures, armored soldiers with telekinetic magic, and dragons pour from cracks in the earth. These are the Dar'rak and their allied species, followers of the leader Ramapheal, whom Aleena imprisoned beneath Vordell using the Arch. During the chaos, Soraya's family familiar Bertok, a metal fox, is killed, and her father, Arden, is critically injured shielding others. On the observation deck, Soraya aims a gun at an armored boy her own age but cannot bring herself to shoot. A tower of black stone rises and generates the Iron Sky, an impenetrable barrier of magically sustained clouds that blocks all sunlight and cripples Vordell's solar-dependent civilization.

Fifteen years later, Soraya is a hardened soldier at a forest base commanded by her mother, Noreen, who has become emotionally cold and ruthlessly pragmatic. Both sides race to reassemble the Arch, which shattered into five pieces during the invasion. The Dar'rak cannot breathe Vordellian air without helmets and can only remain on the surface for limited periods. Guided by intelligence from a Dar'rak defector codenamed Ma'varea, Soraya leads a mission to destroy a stalker breeding nest. The mission succeeds, but her young cousin Noah sacrifices himself by detonating a bomb to kill the stalker queen. Noreen refuses to attend Noah's funeral, telling Soraya soldiers are easily replaced.

Cut off from sunlight, the Vordellians' power reserves are dwindling. When Ma'varea reveals that Ramapheal's Iron Sky Towers are being temporarily restrung, Soraya leads a team of fighter jets and solar-collection craft called Sunrunners above the clouds to charge depleted batteries. On descent, they are ambushed by an enormous dragon ridden by Ramapheal's most feared general, the Demon. Soraya sacrifices herself as a decoy, forcing her former partner Theron to retreat with the surviving Sunrunners. During the dogfight, she rips the Demon's helmet off, revealing a young man with silver hair and mismatched eyes. She shoots him, but the dragon catches her crashing jet. The Demon captures Soraya and brings her to Belvador, the Dar'rak's underground kingdom.

Presented to Ramapheal in Aleena's ruined throne room, where the dead queen's skeleton hangs from the ceiling as a trophy, Soraya refuses to break. Ramapheal performs a blood ritual binding Soraya's life to the Demon, whose name is Ikarus: If Ikarus dies, Soraya dies, preventing her from killing her captor. Ikarus is ordered to extract the locations of the Vordellians' hidden Arch pieces by memory walking, entering Soraya's mind to view her past.

Soraya discovers she can instinctively shield her memories behind golden mental doors. Over weeks of captivity, Ikarus gradually breaks through, accessing childhood memories while Soraya reorganizes her mind to keep military secrets beyond his reach. She observes Ikarus's household: the fairy Emelda; Emelda's husband, Aeris, an Ethereal, one of the Dar'rak allied peoples; the pyromancer Malakai; and the small golem Golla, who secretly brings Soraya meals with flowers. Meanwhile, Theron takes over Soraya's meetings with Ma'varea, who confirms Soraya is alive.

The dynamic between captor and captive grows complicated. Soraya accidentally enters Ikarus's memories and witnesses his father dying from the Bane, a disease caused by Belvador's radioactive rocks that turns victims' insides to stone. She later escapes using faked blood and a dinner tray, discovering a sunken Vordellian military graveyard filled with weapons still charged with pure Light. She engages Ikarus in combat, stabbing him through the stomach. When shrapnel from one of her traps strikes him in the chest, she abandons her escape to perform emergency surgery, resuscitating him when his heart stops. Fragments of his memories flash through her mind during his near-death, including a fairy resembling Emelda being publicly executed.

Ikarus relocates Soraya to Illieck, the fairy territory, where Ma'varea slips her a note promising rescue. Ikarus continues searching her memories with diminishing urgency and voluntarily shows her his own: Invasion Day from his perspective as the boy who hesitated on the observation deck, and the murder of his mother, Serone, whom Ramapheal killed after one of her visions proved false. Soraya begins to see Ikarus as someone shaped by the same war that shaped her, and their tension breaks into a kiss.

During the Vordellian rescue assault on Illieck, Ikarus activates the Demon Hex, a mind-control spell he has been secretly planting in Soraya's mind throughout their sessions. Powerless to resist, Soraya kills a Vordellian soldier using blood magic, making his body explode from within. Ikarus then reveals the devastating truth: The Hex was Ramapheal's real objective all along. Every session plants threads of magic creating invisible puppet strings that transform Soraya into a mindless weapon. Ramapheal chose her specifically for her ruthlessness and her wartime reputation as the God Killer, an epithet she earned through merciless battlefield conduct.

On a test mission in the ruins of Lumirel, Soraya briefly breaks through the Hex to beg Theron to kill her, but Ikarus teleports her away. Under the Hex, she then leads an assault on a Vordellian mountain base, where she chases her best friend Raina, a teacher with a war-damaged spine, and nearly kills her with blood magic. Ikarus intervenes, breaking the Hex and letting Raina escape while securing a piece of the Arch.

At a Belvador checkpoint, Soraya binds Ikarus and removes his helmet, preferring to die alongside him rather than remain Ramapheal's weapon. The countdown expires, but Ikarus does not suffocate. He continues breathing Vordellian air with no ill effects and kills three guards who witness the discovery.

The mystery unravels when Aeris captures Ma'varea, discovering the spy is Malakai. Emelda reveals that she is also Ma'varea: She gathers intelligence by plying Ramapheal's generals with nightshade-laced ash-sticks, smokeable intoxicants that cause slight amnesia, while Malakai delivers the information through Golla's ability to pass through stone walls. Emelda's murdered sister, Varena, had discovered that the Dar'rak can breathe Vordellian air. Ramapheal has been lying for centuries, secretly using his blood magic to kill anyone whose helmet is removed, making their deaths appear to be suffocation. The true source of Dar'rak magic is not Ramapheal's blood, as taught at compulsory infant Rebirth Ceremonies, but the red vapor permeating Belvador. Ramapheal keeps his people underground to ensure they inhale the vapor and believe he is the source of their power. Soraya's own abilities develop naturally from breathing the vapor during her captivity.

Ikarus, devastated that his lifetime of service was built on lies, removes his helmet at the surface and survives. He asks Soraya to help him bring down the Iron Sky. Meanwhile, Theron watches footage of the Hex-controlled Soraya attacking the mountain base and injuring Raina. Blaming himself for not shooting Soraya when he had the chance, Theron vows that the next time he sees her, he will pull the trigger.