Ship of Smoke and Steel

Isoka is eighteen and runs a ward in the lower districts of Kahnzoka, the great port city of the Blessed Empire. She enforces the orders of her criminal masters with Melos, the Well of Combat, a magic that makes her a formidable fighter. Her earnings pay for her younger sister to live in comfort, far from the bloody streets the two grew up on.

The government discovers her magic and arrests her. She is taken before the Emperor's spymaster, who offers one way out: steal Soliton, a legendary ghost ship that no one has ever come back from. If she fails, her sister dies.

Aboard Soliton, Isoka has to get close to the ship's mysterious captain. To do that, she joins the brutal crew and fights alongside them in their endless battles against twisted creatures. Nothing on the ship is as simple as it looks.

She is also drawn to two people she did not plan on: a charismatic fighter who shares her combat magic, and a fearless princess who wields a darker power.

This is epic fantasy with a heist-and-infiltration plot and a lot of large-scale magical combat. It opens the Wells of Sorcery trilogy. Expect a fast, violent pace, a criminal underworld giving way to a haunted ship, and a heroine working under a deadline that puts her sister's life on the line.