The Lesser Devil

Crispin Marlowe has spent his life in the shadow of his older brother Hadrian, whose intellect earned him their father's favour. When his grandmother, the Duchess of Delosis, lies dying and sends for him, Crispin leaves the family seat at Devil's Rest to answer her summons.

The trip to the ducal palace should be an ordinary flight. It is not. Court intrigue is waiting at the other end, and in the mountains around the palace a cultist ambush closes in on him.

This is a novella in the Sun Eater series, numbered 1.5 and set during the same period as Empire of Silence. Readers can pick it up at any point after that first novel. It is told in the third person.

There is far more fighting here than in the main books, and the pace is faster and darker. Along the way the story fills in the politics of the wider universe and the history of the Marlowe family, and a reader who has not finished the later volumes can still follow it.