Radiant Towers Trilogy Book One

Karina Sumner-Smith — 2014

Xhea has no magic. Born without the power that everyone else takes for granted, Xhea is an outcast—no way to earn a living, buy food, or change the life that fate has dealt her. Yet she has a unique talent: the ability to see ghosts and the tethers that bind them to the living world, which she uses to scratch out a bare existence in the ruins beneath the City’s floating Towers. When a rich City man comes to her with a young woman’s ghost tethered to his chest, Xhea has no idea that this ghost will change everything. The ghost, Shai, is a Radiant, a rare person who generates so much power that the Towers use it to fuel their magic, heedless of the pain such use causes. Shai’s home Tower is desperate to get the ghost back and force her into a body—any body—so that it can regain its position, while the Tower’s rivals seek the ghost to use her magic for their own ends. Caught between a multitude of enemies and desperate to save Shai, Xhea thinks herself powerless—until a strange magic wakes within her. Magic dark and slow, like rising smoke, like seeping oil. A magic whose very touch brings death. With two extremely strong female protagonists, Radiant is a story of fighting for what you believe in and finding strength that you never thought you had. Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

Reviews

Janice Hopper@archergal

Nov 2, 2022

A perfectly cromulent fantasy book. Xhea lives in a world with magic, but Xhea has no magic. She can, however, see ghosts. She ekes out a living scavenging in the ruins of a city where some unimaginable catastrophe has taken place. Think of those scenes in Wall-E where the cities are ruined piles of junk. THAT kind of catastrophe, though maybe not QUITE as drastic. It's still possible to go into the ruins and find bits of old technology that she can barter for food. Everything that's left runs on magic, including the giant floating cities where what's left of "Civilization" runs. The floating cities are populated by the elite (i.e., rich in magic) people. They live a pretty decent life. But in an Omelas-like situation, it turns out that they run their cities on the magical emanations of people known as Radiants, because they give off so much magic. This magic will also kill them, so it's in the floating citys' interest to keep their Radiants going as long as possible. Even the Radiants' ghosts can get called into service. O.O Xhea gets involved with a ghost named Shai. What happens with them is the meat of the story. The book left me with some pretty vivid mental images, of floating cities in the air, ruined cities on the ground, and a couple of characters trying to find a way to exist in the middle of all this chaos and exploitation. Decent book, though I'm not sure I'm quite interested enough to follow the story through the next couple of books. But that's just me.

Sheila@duchess

Feb 7, 2022

This book was wonderful, just wonderful :') Behind the genre-bending world building with all the fun of magic and ghosts lies Xhea and her struggle to live in this twisted dystopia after enduring a lifetime of poverty & abuse. The entire thread of Xhea learning what it is to have a friend was so well done, & the last few chapters actually had me welling up a bit. I will admit that the end of this book was wrapped up too neatly, especially since this is a trilogy, but whatever I loved everything. Also, I'm filing this under 'urban fantasy' instead of 'sci-fi' bc of all the magic. Who said urban fantasy novels can't be dystopian?