Fantasy author

Finbar J. Shirley

Cover of The Keep (Prismatic Book 1), an epic fantasy novel by Finbar J. Shirley

Prismatic · Book 1

The Keep

The enemy branded him Prince-Slayer. The Wizard's Keep wants him anyway.

Roald is a farmer's son from the village of Drellum. His warrior clan secretly trained him with a blade, and his mother taught him a forbidden healing cantrip. A prophecy hangs over him that no one will explain.

When the kingdom of Westphalia demands more soldiers for the eastern front, Roald and his best friend Joel march off to war, certain the bards will sing of them.

At the Battle of Phalia there is no glory. The King of Westphalia falls. Joel falls. And Roald cuts down the knight responsible, who turns out to be an enemy prince.

Captured, chained and pelted through the streets of the conquering kingdom, Roald spends two winters in Ravenskeep, a prison carved into a mountain, where the torturer collects his fee in fingernails.

On the morning he is due to hang, someone buys his life.

The price is an iron collar that only the Wizard's Keep can remove, and an order to reach the Keep before the spring equinox. Roald doesn't know who sent for him. He barely knows a single spell. And the gold meant for his journey has gone into the torturer's pocket.

Branded, half-starved and penniless, he sets out for Yarispolia, the free city that guards the pass to the Keep. With him is Laura, a one-armed spear-maiden from his old squad. Meanwhile, Daniella Dar Cordum, youngest daughter of the High Wizard King of Vitria, has been packed off to the very same Keep by sisters who want her out of the way.

The Keep is the fast-paced first instalment of the Prismatic series: epic military fantasy of war, survival, found family, and a school of magic where a farmhand has no business being.

For fans of Anthony Ryan and John Gwynne.

Read on Kindle

Free with Kindle Unlimited.

Cover of The Ultimate Step (Ultimum Book 1), a British cultivation fantasy novel by Finbar J. Shirley, coming soon

Ultimum · Book 1 · Coming soon

The Ultimate Step

Twenty-seven, homeless and bleeding out in a hole beneath London, Joe Peters thought he'd hit rock bottom. It turns out rock bottom was only the first step.

Once, Joe was the golden boy: brilliant, Oxford-bound, going places. Then an accident took his body, his wits and nearly everything else, and the streets took the rest. Now, slumped against a cold stone in the dark, he has one last, curious thought. What's that faint glimmer behind him?

He wakes. Somehow. And he isn't alone. An ancient master named Augustus Levi, long dead and unapologetic about it, has left Joe an inheritance: a clay amphora, a head full of impossible knowledge, and a path that no one has walked in millennia.

The path has steps. One hundred and forty-four of them, each heavier than the last. Beyond them lie blood-soaked trials, a secret society hiding in plain sight, and a London older and stranger than the one Joe used to beg in. Somewhere down there are answers about his father, who went to work for the mysterious Red Rock and never came home.

It's a long way up from the gutter. Every step costs blood. And Joe is only getting started.

The first book in the Ultimum series: a wry, gritty British cultivation adventure. Perfect for fans of Will Wight's Cradle, Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.

Hear when it launches

About Finbar Shirley

Portrait of fantasy author Finbar J. Shirley

Finbar J. Shirley writes fast-paced fantasy from Charlo, New Brunswick, where his desk looks out over the Bay of Chaleur. Brandon Sanderson is his favourite author, and he grew up on Dickens, Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth and Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind. He started writing during his first year in prison, when he ran out of great series to read, and that first draft taught him the craft. The Keep begins his epic Prismatic series, and The Ultimate Step, a British cultivation fantasy, launches his second series, Ultimum. A trained electrician and lifelong lover of space, he hopes one day to write the kind of sprawling science fiction he grew up admiring.

Join the newsletter, be first to hear when The Ultimate Step launches