The Stone in the Skull

Best SFF Books 2017 - The Guardian
Kirkus Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2017
The Verge Recommended Fantasy for 2017
Locus 2017 Recommended Reading List

This first volume of a new Eternal Sky trilogy takes readers over the dangerous mountain passes of the Steles of the Sky and south, into the Lotus Kingdoms.

The Gage, a brass automaton created by a long-dead wizard of Messaline around the core of a human being, works as a mercenary. He carries a message from the most powerful sorcerer of Messaline to the Rajni of the Lotus Kingdom. With him is the Dead Man, a bitter survivor of the bodyguard of the deposed Uthman Caliphate, protecting the message and the Gage. They are friends, of a peculiar sort.

They are walking into a dynastic war between the rulers of the shattered bits of a once great Empire.