Rising of the Golem King: Warrior of the Plains, Book One

Title: Rising of the Golem King: Warrior of the Plains, Book One Genre: Epic Fantasy, Grimdark, Survival Fiction Subgenres: Kingdom Building, Progression Fantasy, Low Magic, Revenge Narrative, Clan Warfare Recommended Age Range: 17+ (Due to torture, captivity, massacre, and grimdark violence) A BROKEN PRINCE. A SHATTERED CLAN. AN UNFORGIVING WASTELAND. For months his enemies kept him staked in their camp, draining his blood into bowls to feed the wolf-dogs they were training to hunt him. Civar, last heir of the Thunder Clan, was never meant to leave that camp alive. His people were slaughtered at a betrothal feast. His own promised bride stood at his enemy's shoulder and pronounced him unfit to live. And when he finally slips his ropes, the pack on his trail knows his scent better than any creature alive, because it was raised on his blood. Barefoot, bled white, and armed with a sharpened stick, Civar has three things left: the warrior's gift burning in his veins, the training of a murdered clan, and the knowledge of a fallen empire, poured into his mind by a deadly absorption orb on the day he became a man. It will have to be enough. To survive, Civar turns the wilderness itself into his forge. He drains his own veins to throw the scent-hounds off his trail. He kills his hunters and rides their horses west. He washes iron from raw earth, fires bricks from river clay, ropes wild mares out of thundering herds, and raises a holding from empty grass with his own two hands, one tool, one wall, one horse at a time. But the plains test everything a man builds. A year after Civar cut a hundred slaves free and rode away without giving his name, their delegation walks out of the grass and finds him. Widows. Orphans. Old craftsmen with dying knowledge and starving children with none. You are a chieftain without a people, they tell him. We are a people without a chieftain. To reclaim what was stolen, he must become the salt-giver: feed the starving, arm the helpless, raise orphan boys into riders, and forge the newborn Thunderstride Clan from the dirt up, beneath the eyes of a wild stallion king whose crown he has sworn to take. Far to the east, his enemies believe the Thunder Clan died screaming. Let them believe it a little longer. For fans of grimdark survival, pragmatic progression fantasy, tactical base-building, and hard-won clan warfare. A standalone entry in the world of Rising of the Golem King.