Offer your enemy what they most desire, and hold the knife so close they are blind to it.

The port city of Kalathon—jewel of the civilized world. For generations, its wealthy rulers have used the patient arts of bribery, marriage, and betrayal to keep the warlike nomads of the steppe divided. When a powerful clan leader threatens this order, Kalathon’s king executes a ruthless plan to defeat the nomads, taking the clan leader’s daughter as a prize.

But the king's prize is more dangerous than he ever imagined.

As she turns the king’s sons against each other and a horde of nomads gathers outside the gates, the woman who was meant to be a trophy plays Kalathon’s own game more skillfully than the men who seek to possess her—the only question is who will be left standing when the dynasty burns, and what kind of ruler will inherit the ashes.

Lush, mythic, and steeped in the texture of a vanished world, The Age of Collapse is an epic of empire, devotion turned to ruin, and the founding of a new age. For readers of Madeline Miller, Guy Gavriel Kay, and Mary Renault—a debut that reads like a myth recovered from the deep past.