Age of Assassins

June 26, 2017
In Barker’s uneven epic fantasy debut, a disabled teen hero faces down mighty adversaries. Girton the Club-Foot was enslaved as a child; since being rescued, he’s become an apprentice assassin roaming the cursed land to distribute deadly justice. To sniff out a killer targeting the heir to the throne, Girton disguises himself as a son of a lesser noble family come to court to train as a squire. As he and his master, Merela Karn, carry on their investigations, they peel back the layers of court intrigue and hidden alliances to find that nearly every person from the priests to the lower classes seems to have reason to kill the cruel, spoiled prince. Girton tries to sort out who is actually behind the plot while also contending with more typical teenage concerns (including first crushes, a sexual relationship, and cliquey friendships) and learning to behave as a noble in a highly stratified society. Girton’s maturity and skill seem occasionally inconsistent: with his peers he acts in accordance with his 15 years, but he can also stare down the powerful and speak his mind with adults. Impressionistic flashbacks offer moving reflections on his prior life, and readers will appreciate Barker’s complex mythology and smoothly flowing plot.

August 1, 2017
The world has been ravaged by dark magic. Sorcerers, whose craft sucks life from the very earth itself, are outlawed as abominations, their descendants hunted down and killed, bled out to feed the dead ground created by their ancestors in a bid to restore that land to life. This is the world of young Girton Club-Foot, the crippled assassin's apprentice. Taken in as a young slave child by the land's best assassin, Girton and his master are pulled into a plot of deception and intrigue, political and personal. Time ticks down as the assassins work to catch other would-be assassins, to unmask a traitor, and to escape with their very lives. But there are secrets, and then there are secrets. As the story unfolds, there are ever more wrinkles to the plot, and not everything is what it seems; in fact, almost everything Girton thought he knew comes into question. The first book of a projected trilogy, this is one readers will find hard to put down.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)