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, aromantic and gay questioning.
Secondary character rep includes: sapphic, dyslexic, asexual, gay and a gender identity journey.
Content Warnings
These include; intimate partner 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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Get It On…
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
To succeed in his Monster Containment career and team, former lone wolf Rarkin knows he must learn to trust his teammates, and let them in. Which becomes more daunting when a brand-new classmate, with her own secrets, joins the team. And when his class begin learning to craft magic, the destructive potential of which Rarkin’s afraid to touch. But the only way is forwards, and he’ll give it his best shot.
Even when monsters turn up in places they shouldn’t. Even when he finds himself in over his head, and resorts to reckless bravery and autistic bluntness, somehow successfully navigating situations in ways that win him great acclaim. At which point he recognises the need to confront how child abuse in his past still impacts his self-worth. Because his character, experiences and capacity are drawing attention not only in the highest ranks of the institution he works for, but of a powerful vigilante.
And that vigilante is working with a familiar rogue crime boss. He’s still at large, is as clever and capable as Rarkin suspects, and less than half as rational. In countering him, Sythe’s resources are stretched thin. Rarkin finds his team on missions at the edge of their monster containing and fledgling magical capabilities. If he doesn’t start trusting his team to have his back, and actively value himself in the face of dangers beyond his ability to confront; he’s going to get himself killed.
Representation
CPTSD, autistic, asexual, aromantic, gay, nonbinary, demisexual, panromantic.
Secondary character rep includes: lesbian, gay, pansexual.
Content Warnings
Suicide, death, grief. References to (past) child abuse, intimate partner violence (past and present), and (past) family dysfunction. Self-esteem, self-belief and self-worth issues (due to trauma from childhood abuse).
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Pre-order (ebooks) on… (Out May 24th, 2026)
Paperbacks: may not be available to order until release day, May 24th. If that changes, I will update this page!
