Black Gate

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Valley of Embers by Steven Kelliher is primarily the story of Kole Reyna and Linn Ve’Ran. Although Linn Ve’Ran is a skilled and dedicated hunter and warrior, she is not an Ember like Kole, a Landkist given power to control flame by the land. But the land from which Kole’s power comes is not the titular valley where Kole’s and Linn’s people live, but the desert from which their ancestors fled from the war between the Sages. Before he fell in battle, the King of Ember struck a bargain with the Sage White Crest to shelter his people in the valley. Separated from the desert for decades, those born as Embers are fewer and weaker each generation. Instead, some are gifted with the native Landkist power of the valley, the healing and dreaming of the Faeykin. But it is the Embers who are especially valued, to fight the Dark Kind who have returned, bearing the corruption of the Eastern Dark from whom the Emberkin fled years before.

Everyone wonders what had become of the White Crest, who was to be their protector. Some think that he fell shortly after the King of Ember, when he shattered the land to turn back the Eastern Dark. Others think that in his isolation, he is unaware of their plight, or thinks that they can handle things themselves, or is too busy fighting the far greater threat of the Eastern Dark. Since the night of his mother’s death while seeking out the White Crest and the dream he had of her fall, Kole has believed that the White Crest has turned against them, and it is he who sends the Dark Kind.

But while Kole is given permission to seek out the White Crest and get some answers, he is delayed when he suffers a grievous injury by a Sentinel, one of the Dark Kind’s lieutenants, who can convert humans to their cause. While he fights the darkness that seeks to turn him, Linn Ve’Ran gathers some friends and strikes out without him. Her party quickly runs into trouble when they encounter an army of Dark Kind besieging the Valley’s largest city, Hearth, and only half of them make it to the mountains where the White Crest dwells.

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