The Soul of Power

The magical conclusion to the Waking Land trilogy.

“Bates brilliantly concludes an impressive high fantasy trilogy with this tale of scheming and magic. ...[A] fresh, confident, powerful accomplishment.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"An excellent and exciting conclusion to an outstanding romantic fantasy trilogy. Sophy is as intriguing and complex a hero as Elanna and Jahan (The Memory of Fire), while the secondary characters remain just as well drawn. Highly recommended." —Library Journal (starred review)

Sophy Dunbarron—the illegitimate daughter of a king that never was—has always felt like an impostor. Separated from her birth mother, raised by parents mourning the loss of their true daughter, and unacknowledged by her father, Sophy only desires one thing: a place and a family to call her own. But fate has other ideas. Caught up in Elanna Valtai’s revolution, Sophy has become the reigning monarch of a once-divided country—a role she has been groomed her whole life to fill.

But as she quickly discovers, wearing a crown is quite a different thing from actually keeping a crown. With an influx of magic-bearing refugees pouring across the border, resources already thinned by war are stretched to the breaking point. Half the nobility in her court want her deposed, and the other half question her every decision. And every third person seems to be spontaneously manifesting magical powers.

When Elanna is captured and taken to Paladis, Sophy’s last ally seems to have vanished. Now it is up to her alone to navigate a political maze that becomes more complex and thorny by the day. And worse, Sophy is hiding a huge secret—one that could destroy her tenuous hold on the crown forever.