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A World of Lithomancy
Dark Bringer follows a cypher cop, an archangel, and a miner’s daughter whose paths cross with the grisly murder of a corrupt consul. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
So Dark Bringer is actually the start of a prequel series that ties into my Nightmarked books. I’d always wanted to tell the story of how that world, called the Via Sancta, came about. When I finished that series (and fans wanted more), I knew it was time to go back and explore the origins. Kaldurite plays a large role in the Nightmarked books, and after much brainstorming, and tossing out storyline after storyline, I decided to focus on this very special gemstone that repels magic in a world of lithomancy. Where it came from, who found it, and how it ultimately shook the foundations of Sion—Cathrynne and Gavriel’s world. Of course, their love story is also a big element, and one that is touched on in the later Nightmarked books, too.
What is the most challenging aspect of planning a fantasy series?
Everything! They have so many moving parts. But having muddled through a few over the last ten years, I’ve learned to think the choices I make all the way through (as far as this is possible—there are always surprises). You’ll have to live with those choices (who survives, who dies, what are the limits of magic, etc) for many books to come, so be sure they’ll work with the larger story down the line. Some choices open doors, and others close them forever. It can be a daunting process, and I think that’s why it takes me longer to plot than it used to. I’ve made plenty of mistakes I regretted and don’t want to do that again! Oh, and here’s another one: don’t write TOO many characters, and TOO many storylines. That still tends to be my downfall, haha.
Do you have a favorite character in this first installment of The Lord of Everfell series? One that is especially fun to write for?
I’ll say it straight: Gavriel starts as an arrogant, uptight prig who needs to be taken down a notch, so I’m actually enjoying writing him more in the next book, War Witch, where he’s forced to reckon with the sins of his past. Kal is funny and smart, but she, too, is mainly focused on her own problems in Dark Bringer, and becomes more altruistic in the next one.
Cathrynne, who is both pragmatic and vulnerable, and just a decent person, is my favorite.
Can we get a glimpse inside Book 2? Where will it take readers?
I have not written the blurb yet, and it would entail massive spoilers to discuss Gavriel, but I can say that he becomes a lot more human (for an angel), Cathrynne goes on a quest to find the witch goddess Minerva, and Kal heads to Iskatar under the fake name Kayla Jentzen, which lands her in fresh trouble. Levi and the White Foxes are still in pursuit, but that’s all I can say for now!
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Cathrynne Rowan is half witch, half angel. Such unions are forbidden, and the offspring – called cyphers – are reviled as abominations. But Cathrynne’s powers are indisputable, so when Lord Morningstar is nearly killed by an assassin, she’s summoned to serve as his bodyguard.
In Sion, all magic derives from gems and metals. Cathrynne and Gavriel must hunt down a mysterious stone that’s left a trail of bodies in its wake. Along the way, they forge an unlikely kinship that threatens to blossom into something more. Something decidedly dangerous.
Then Cathrynne starts having visions of a fallen angel who will tear the empire from its moorings. It seems impossible that the upright and honorable Lord Morningstar could be this Dark Bringer. But if it is Gavriel… How far will she go to stop him?
Taking place a thousand years before the events of the award-winning Nightmarked series, Lord of Everfell is set on the sprawling continent of Sion, where witches, angels, and humans populate seven vibrant realms surrounding the Parnassian Sea. Get ready for epic intrigue, dragons, and a love affair for the ages!
Dark Bringer
Dark Bringer, by Kat Ross, is a gaslamp-flavored epic fantasy that braids together a murder mystery, political intrigue, and forbidden divinity. In a world ruled by distant gods and policed by arrogant angels, we follow three main threads: Cathrynne Rowan, a hard-headed cypher cop with illegal seer gifts; Gavriel Morningstar, the severe archangel who once condemned an angel for loving a witch; and Kal, a miner’s daughter on the run after a gem-smuggling disaster. Their paths tangle around the spectacularly grisly murder of a corrupt consul in the city of Kota Gelangi, smuggled ley-gems, and the re-emergence of the draconic Sinn and the eerie Plain of Contemplation that swallows exiled angels.
I really love the world the author has created here. Author Kat Ross gives us a secondary world that feels halfway between an industrial empire and a late-Victorian university town: angel towers sharing horizons with observatories, student bars, and gossip rags; cyphers kicking down doors while White Fox witch-inquisitors swoop in to steal the glory; miners whispering prayers to monsters they also fear. The terminology, ley, liminal spaces, forcing, Sinn, never felt like a glossary dump; it arrives in the middle of chases, interrogations, and messy street scenes. I loved the way magic is both sacred and bureaucratic: archangels filing paperwork while traveling through liminal ley, witches arguing jurisdiction, cyphers grumbling about forms as they bleed all over a White Fox’s expensive car upholstery.
On the character side, the book felt like a conversation between cynicism and care. Cathrynne is wonderfully prickly. She has a brutal sense of justice, a horror of confinement, and this buried terror that her seer visions will get her entombed in a kloster for life. Watching her collide with Gavriel, who starts as the epitome of cold angelic law and gradually reveals a bone-deep loneliness, was deeply satisfying. Their dynamic shifts from mutual irritation to wary respect to something that definitely is not regulation-approved, and the last chapters lean harder into that tension. Kal’s storyline gives the book its raw, working-class heartbeat: a girl who knows the mines, who carries a wise-cracking ghost and a ship tattoo under her concealer, pulled into the same conspiracy from the opposite end of the empire. Her chapters add grit and grief to what could otherwise have stayed a high-altitude political thriller.
I’d hand Dark Bringer to readers who like epic fantasy, gaslamp fantasy, fantasy mystery, and angel-and-witch fantasy with a strong streak of character drama. If you enjoy the divine politics and flawed immortals of N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, but wish the world came with more cops-and-robbers chases, haunted miners, and draconic horror, this scratches a very similar itch while feeling distinctly its own. For me, Dark Bringer is sharp, moody, and unexpectedly tender–murder mystery in a crumbling empire full of gods and ghosts.
Pages: 410 | ASIN : B0F4KWFMTL
