‘This startling alternative history takes us to a newly-imagined world… The result is a vivid, ferocious adventure.’ Kim Stanley-Robinson
‘A highly original, vividly-imagined fantasy Roman Empire where oil is power’ Ruth Downie
A Female Gladiator’s Vow. A Stolen Child. A Storm to End Empires
In a petrol-fuelled Roman Empire which never fell, Arrow, a gladiatrix turned governess must rescue the child she has loved as her own, a girl who could tear down the world.
When Livy is abducted during a devastating Godstorm, Arrow must unleash years of the gladiator training she’d sworn to forget in order to save her. Defying her owner, a heartless Consul, Arrow turns to her ex-lover and the illegal druid underworld in a desperate attempt to rescue the girl she has come to think of as her own.
Her search will take her across Londinium, a city of petrol-powered chariots, to the pagan Old Town, and eventually the edge of the known the Amazon, where destiny and destruction intertwine
Facing battle and betrayal Arrow must reclaim her past as a killer—or risk everything for the child who calls her “mother.”
She is the Sword.
