The Corral Ring - Thomas Richards

Sorcery dawned 500 years BCE, but did it ever really end? To know what happened, we must return to the middle ages - to a time that birthed legends whom history forgot...

The Ambrosius Chronicles begins around 500 BCE, in a world with a history that's very different from what we have recorded. As a result of unseen hands, meddling from the shadows, the figures we believe to be legend are true, but events surrounding them, not so much.

When using realism, you can draw on iconic figures from mythology. When world building, you can do anything. The Ambrosius Chronicles boasts both, with the remarkable premise of a history rich with magic and all manner of mythical creatures.

Kings of human, dwarven and elven peoples rule across medieval Albion; wizards occupy the ancient kingdom of East Anglia and strive to exert supremacy over all magical affairs; and all manner of mythical creatures dwell within the mysterious world known as Faerie.

Synposis

For reasons that Ezekiel Stone and Laura Tailor are far from realising, their lives are intertwined with events guided by unseen hands that require the rediscovery of buried history and guarded secrets to overcome. Alas, getting involved has the potential to make things worse, because what they learn, how, and their resulting choices will determine the sides they take in struggles between creation's children, dating back to time immemorial.

Set around 1270 CE, Albion, representatives of London, led by their supreme sorcerer arrive at Norwich with accusations of warlocks attacking their kingdom. Zeke Stone, the tower guard's latest recruit, unwittingly becomes a pawn between the Wizard Council and enemies long thought vanquished. Under the threat of war with the great kingdom of Mercia, the council's race to learn the secrets of a dark object and uncover the plans and identity of their adversary place Zeke in the middle of an unlikely alliance where he must fight for his life, his future, and the future of Albion.

While Zeke is unwitting, Laura Tailor is as dutiful as she is ambitious, and that ambition threatens to be her undoing, leading her down a path with dangers radically different from anything she could have envisioned from reading books. Nathaniel Pearce is a druid, an expert in old and forgotten enchantments, and Zeke's best friend, but even his knowledge doesn't compare to the vastness of Malachi's mental archive. As a mysterious alleged madman, operating under various identities, there is much of Malachi's story to be discovered.

The Corral Ring is a brilliant start to what promises to be an amazing high fantasy series, home to sword and sorcery, powerful monarchs, feudal lords, mythical creatures, hidden agendas, a little politics and a lot of action and adventure!