The Ninth Heir

Caro Vell is the ninth in line for the Iron Throne of Halvenn. The first eight are his older brothers, three sisters, two cousins, and an uncle who has been promising to die for sixteen years. By the end of summer, six of them are dead — drowned, poisoned, shot, lost in a hunt, found face-down in a fountain, and one (the uncle) finally, of natural causes.

Caro has not killed any of them. The succession is, however, arriving at his door anyway, and the magic that decides who wears the crown does not, it turns out, care what he wanted. The book is about what he chooses to do with the throne when it lands in his lap, and what the throne — patient, ancient, and very particular — chooses to do with him.