Book 1: Walking the Knife’s Edge
It’s hard to focus on your studies when you’re from the wrong side of town, your dad’s an abusive prick and classmates are intimidated by your skills at hand to hand combat. But for Rarkin, getting into Sythe School means monsters, the chance to contain ones that stray into human occupied zones, and the opportunity to do something meaningful with his life. Even better; it includes an Electric Way pass out of town and travel beyond city limits.
Rarkin seizes his chance at his dream job with everything he’s got, forcing down traumatic memories to focus on work he knows he could love. But it’s a dangerous time to be holding everything in, to have little contact with friends like brothers, or to be keeping new friends at arm’s length.
Sythe’s nemesis, Organised Crime is no longer playing by the ‘rules,’ and Rarkin and his classmates are on the front line. Organised Crime’s bold new tactics tear at the bandages of Rarkin’s unhealed wounds and his unresolved CPTSD.
To be the person Rarkin doesn’t believe people saying he can be, he must change his toxically masculine approach to emotions, and break the cycle of violence in his family. If he doesn’t make peace with his past and stop fighting EVERYTHING, he’s on the road to self destruction. In working for Sythe; Rarkin is Walking the Knife’s Edge.
Representation
Rarkin’s toxic masculinity and his black and white, autistic mode of thinking are a bad combination, but his autistic tendency to logically puzzle things out might just save him. He has CPTSD, is asexual and pan-romantic questioning.
Secondary character rep includes: sapphic, dyslexic, asexual, gay and a gender identity journey.
Content Warnings
These include; family violence and child abuse (graphic in chapter’s 3, 4 and 24), family dysfunction, CPTSD and some homophobic, sexist/ misogynistic etc refs. (Healing is a BIG part of of Rarkin’s character ark.)
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Buying direct from me means you get a DRM-free epub file or a paperback with a price that aims to be competitive internationally -including postage-, and I get a little more profit from each sale.
Connection to Ruarnon Trilogy
This series is set in the same world as Ruarnon Trilogy, 3,000 years later. The schools Teliph founds have become a global organisation of magical education, monster and emergency services training. Though Umarinaris has regressed into (modern) city states, Sythe is international, as is its nemesis; Organised Crime.
Book 2: Countering the Hands of Crime
Containing low level monsters for Monster Containment ought to be easy enough. But Rarkin’s doing it handicapped by the struggle to let down walls he’s had up between with most people, for self preservation, for 17 years.
That would be hard enough with people he’s been studying with for two years. But a new classmate is joining his team. Ilara is surprisingly capable for a ‘new student,’ particularly with magic. Rarkin suspects Ilara has secrets of her own. But he’s barely begun to gauge her capacity when their team begins working under extraordinary conditions.
Not only is crime boss Mavon still at large, he’s as clever and capable as Rarkin suspects, and less than half as rational. Worse, a second crime boss is going rogue, as organised crime continues morphing into something far more dangerous.
In countering both crime bosses, Sythe’s resources are stretched thin. Rarkin finds his team on missions they’re barely experienced enough to handle, at the edge of their monster containing and fledgling magical capabilities. The survival of his team is about to depend on the trust Rarkin is struggling to develop.
Representation
CPTSD, autistic, asexual, pan-romantic questioning, nonbinary, demisexual.
Secondary character rep includes: lesbian, aroace, gay, pansexual.
Content Warnings
Refs to violence against women (present day), and refs to family violence and child abuse (in Rarkin’s past.)
Add it to your TBR
Pre-order (ebooks) on… (Out May 17th, 2026)
Paperbacks: may not be available to order until release day, May 17th. If that changes, I will update this page!
