Sleeper (The Kalin Chronicles, Book 1) [High Fantasy]

How tenuous, the balance that holds Kalin together.
How simple, the nightmare that will tear it apart.

Within the city of Kalin, everything has its place. The operans rule, the tixans sell, and the kudrans labor. This rigid hierarchy is the blightsteel foundation without which Kalin would have crumbled centuries ago. To this day, it is the only cooperative civilization between the three anthrid races.

For the six days of the waking week, the anthrids toil to ensure the well-being of their home.

Then they fall asleep.

Each week for two days, the anthrids inhabit a shared dream state of impossible physics and indescribable enigma. Haunting this realm are the incubi, hellish creatures who seek out the anthrids and hunt them down while asleep. During those two days, the anthrids cower in terror; during the other six, everyone loathes and ignores the incubi.

Everyone except for Melira.

As Kalin's youngest assassin, Melira Canton has been trained to notice subtle inconsistencies. She is the first to notice that Kalin's king is hiding a dark secret, one that dates back five years to the day when the king renounced his addiction to magic.

Even as she draws closer to understanding, unraveling a plot that concerns not only the anthrids but the incubi as well, the king is preparing his city for a civil war. Through subtle influence and manipulation of Kalin's factions, he has strengthened the long-standing tension between the operan nobility and the kudran proletariat.

Melira discovers the king's secret. She comes to understand his motivations for turning his own people against one another. But preventing the incitement of a class conflict that has been five years in the making will require more than a rapier and a badass attitude (although that will certainly help). It will be difficult, perhaps impossible.

But the alternative will be Kalin's downfall.

Reed Buck's debut novel, Sleeper, is the first in his upcoming trilogy, The Kalin Chronicles.