Somewhere in the Midlands, a man surrounded by attention-seeking cats has agreed to end the world again. The Broken Binding Publishing has acquired The Silverlight Trilogy from Matthew Ward, a new epic fantasy set in Aradane, the same world as his Legacy Trilogy. Commissioning editor Simon Spanton took World English language rights, ebook and audio included, from agent John Jarrold. The first volume is due in summer 2028. Anyone still waiting on The Winds of Winter will regard that as practically next Tuesday.
The pitch is gloriously unashamed. Mortal kingdoms squabble, divine powers stir from their slumber, and a world born of primal Dark is heading for a fiery finish, unless somebody stops the war before it starts. Standing first against the heavens are an exiled prince, a reluctant witch and a scoundrel weighed down by ancient guilt. That is either the opening of a Ward trilogy or the character sheets at every Saturday afternoon D&D session since 1978. The looming catastrophe is called the Reckoning of the Gods, and nobody ever named anything the Reckoning of the Gods because a quiet weekend was in prospect.
Ward knows how to fill a shelf. The Legacy Trilogy (Legacy of Ash, Legacy of Steel and Legacy of Light) ran at Orbit from 2019 to 2021 and pitted the Tressian Republic against the Hadari Empire across three bricks of bone-crunching battle and political knife-work. Legacy of Ash alone weighed in at around 240,000 words, and the final volume’s paperback ran to 784 pages. He followed it with the Soulfire Saga, which wrapped up in 2025. Back in 2020, Ward mentioned that there was a whole series of Aradane stories he’d love to write should readers want them. Evidently they did.
Here at SFcrowsnest, we have a soft spot for writers who served their time in the Games Workshop lore mines. Ward spent a decade as one of the principal architects of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, which is about as thorough a training in apocalypse management as exists. He now splits his time between novels and writing and voice-directing video games, including Darktide, Vermintide 2 and Aliens: Dark Descent. His bio cites a childhood diet of Doctor Who, Star Trek, Babylon 5 and The Prisoner, plus Tolkien and Pratchett. It also confesses an obsession with castles, historic cities and the London Underground. One lives in hope of a doomed fantasy capital whose catacombs are laid out like the Northern line, two branches and all.
The publisher is the interesting part of the story. TBBP is the publishing spin-off of The Broken Binding, the special-edition and subscription box company. It has already scored Sunday Times bestsellers with its republications of Ryan Cahill’s Of Blood and Fire and The Fall, and with Jesse Aragon’s debut The Demon Star. The list concentrates on epic and traditional fantasy, with SF and horror promised later. There is a pleasing historical rhyme here. Forty years ago, collectors’ editions meant Science Fiction Book Club hardbacks printed on paper that yellowed if you looked at it sternly. Now the collectors’ box has turned into the publisher. It is also faintly comforting that a firm called The Broken Binding is taking on 750,000-word trilogies, since it presumably understands the risk better than most.
The deal is a reunion of sorts. Jarrold, who brokered Ward’s original Orbit contract back in 2018, notes that TBBP’s Matt Holland has championed Ward since Legacy of Ash. He adds that this is his agency’s first deal with the imprint, but “it certainly won’t be the last.” He also gets to work with his old friend Spanton again. Ward, for his part, says he is delighted to be heading home to Aradane in such good company.
That leaves twenty-odd months to reread the Legacy books, assuming your wrists are up to it. The gods of Aradane have been asleep for a very long time. In summer 2028, something rather heavy will land on the doormat and wake them.
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