In Book 3 of the Sanctuary series, the last of the prosecutions relating to the coup attempt are winding down. Civil liberties are restored and there is a renewed movement to end mandatory marriage and to abolish the monarchy. Master Tehv, the son of the assassinated king, leaves the palace ostensibly to assist at his uncle's training camp for the kinetically uncoordinated. His real reason is to avoid his Little Parents, whose political machinations he blames for his father's death. His cousin, Prince Nor, goes to work in a transportation company after his younger brother is crowned instead of him. He busies himself tracking a mysterious stranger, who is described alternately as a champion for justice and a coldblooded terrorist. Meanwhile, a convicted mass murderer plots one last series of hits from his deathbed. As the palace-born cousins look for love and a new life in the commoner world, a war breaks out in neighboring countries that spills over into Sanctuary.
The Sanctuary series is a set of stories told episodically over the course of ten years. Over time, they were combined into books for easier tracking and distribution. Although background information is repeated periodically throughout the books to help those who haven't read the earlier portions, many find it best to start from the beginning book, "Surviving Sanctuary" and then go on to "Grave-climbing" before beginning this one. Of course, you're always welcome to dive in anyway at any point you wish. Sanctuary is a very welcoming, if imaginary, place. The series itself was dubbed as a speculative ethnology and is set in a culture where alternative ways of looking at things is necessary for survival.
