Novels by Sherwood Smith

Exordium

Book 2: Ruler of Naught

Sherwood Smith & Dave Trowbridge

In the sequel to The Phoenix in Flight, Brandon vlith-Arkad, who fled the Mandalic Palace and his old life only hours ahead of assassination, is now heir to the Panarchy. He wants only to rescue his father, the Panarch. But everyone wants a piece of him. The Dol’jharians, who smashed the Panarchy and took his father prisoner. A Rifter pirate and her crew, who helped him escape a doomed planet—twice—and now wonder what to do about a royal prisoner with the price of ten planets on his head. And the remnants of the government of the Thousand Suns, for whom he'd at best be an inconvenience.

And that’s before things go seriously pear-shaped. Racing ahead of the light-speed news of their attack with FTL comms and weapons looted from a fortress built millions of years ago, the Dol'jharians and those Rifters allied with them are consolidating their victories. Elements of the Panarchist Navy struggle to understand what’s happening, find surviving units, and strike back. And Eusabian of Dol’jhar, now master of the Mandala from which his defeated enemy once ruled the Thousand Suns, awaits news of the Heart of Kronos, the missing key to ultimate power.

Which lies in the hands of Brandon’s captor. The chase is on, and unexpected detours await.

SPECIAL OFFER: Get started on the Exordium series with Book 1: The Phoenix in Flight for only $0.99! 

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ISBN: 978-1-61138-148-1

Publication date: December 27, 2011

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Exordium

The Phoenix in Flight

Sherwood Smith & Dave Trowbridge

Smith and Trowbridge describe the flavor of their five-book space opera Exordium as a cross between Star Wars and Dangerous Liaisons with a touch of the Three Stooges. With its fast-moving blend of humor and horror, of high-tech skiffy and the deep places of the human heart, The Phoenix in Flight launches the reader into a complex, multi-layered universe as Brandon nyr-Arkad, dissolute youngest son of the ruler of the Thousand Suns, abandons the life of Service planned for him and flees into the lawless Rift. Only slowly does he discover that the world he rejected now lies in smoking ruins as the ritual vengeance of Jerrode Eusabian against Brandon’s father, twenty years in preparation, culminates in an explosion of interstellar violence. With both his brothers dead and his father the Panarch imprisoned, Brandon becomes the Panarchy’s last hope.

Co-Author Dave Trowbridge...

...has been writing high-tech marketing copy for almost thirty years. This has made him an expert in what he calls “pulling stuff out of the cave of the flying monkeys,” so science fiction is a natural career move. He lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains with his writer wife, Deborah J. Ross, and a tri-lingual German Shepherd  Dog responsible for three cats. 

SPECIAL OFFER: To celebrate the publication of Ruler of Naught, the second book in the Exordium series, Book 1: The Phoenix in Flight is available for only $0.99! 

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Publication date: May 17, 2011

ISBN: 978161138 059 0

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Wren’s Quest

Sherwood Smith

Wren thought she was an orphan. After discovering that she might have family, she wants to spend her first vacation from Cantirmoor’s Magic School in finding them. But her quest turns into a far more dangerous adventure than she ever imagined, what with robbers, guardsmen, and an angry sorcerer after her. And when her traveling companion, young prince Connor Shaltar, begins to meddle with magic as well — things get entirely out of hand — meanwhile, back in Cantirmoor, Wren’s best friend, Princess Teressa, is trying to get accustomed to living in court. Not so easy after all those years in an orphanage. Especially when someone is causing trouble in Cantirmoor, not just between courtiers, but magical trouble. And Tyron, her friend, is involved. It takes all four friends to solve this mystery.

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Mearsies Heili Bounces Back

Sherwood Smith

“I am Princess Cherene Jennet Sherwood of Mearsies Heili, hater of evil, foe to all villains, and wielder of the prune pie of justice!” That’s how CJ Sherwood introduces herself when she lands into her craziest adventure yet. In this, the second volume of CJ’s records, she and her gang of friends gathered around the thirteen year old queen, Clair Sherwood, find themselves beset by magical spells and various villains. They still manage to have fun in the underground hideout in the middle of Mearsies Heili’s woodland.

CJ loves life with ‘the M girls’ — so she is completely unprepared to be taken away and put in a silken prison in order to forget being a princess.  As CJ uses her brains and imagination to get out of trouble, she has to think about what being a princess really means.

She also discovers that there are things even tougher to deal with than terrible enchantments, sinister shadows, and lurking villains:  teenage boys.

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Hunt Across Worlds

CJ’s Sixth Notebook

Sherwood Smith

First written when Sherwood Smith was a teen, the series called CJ’s Notebooks feature a gang of girls around thirteen-year-old Queen Clair of Mearsies Heili. The M girls, as they come to be known, prefer their villains silly, their throwing pies gloppy, and their adventures fun. But villains don’t ask first if the girls want to be dragged into dangerous escapades, so they’ve had more than their share.

Sometimes they are not the center of the dangerous escapades.

Hunt Across Worlds, a prelude to Fleeing Peace, is about two kids from Earth who discover a boy from another world being kept prisoner. When they rescue him, they end up having to cross the USA before being blasted by magic to Mearsies Heili, where they meet a sailor girl who’s been stuck in charge of a Mysterious Magical Object.

CJ and the gang try to come to the rescue, discovering that being on the edge of big events can lead to bigger questions; this one leads directly into Everon.

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Senrid

Sherwood Smith

The kids on the good side are united in one thing: regarding Senrid as a villain. So what do you do when you're fifteen, supposedly king of one of the most powerful kingdoms in the world, but all you have on your side are wit, will, and maybe a few skills? And what if the people you like best are your enemies, and your relatives want to see you dead?

Three novelettes and a novella, forming an arc with Senrid at the center, written when I was exactly Senrid's age, fifteen.

Poor World

CJ’s Fourth Notebook

Sherwood Smith

If you have a hankering to experience the prune pie of justice, ask CJ or her gang of girls if they want to Save the World.

The Mearsiean girls around thirteen-year-old Queen Clair prefer their villains silly, their throwing pies gloppy, and their adventures fun. But what happens when you’ve gained a reputation for successfully outwitting villains twice your age and experience?

Recruitment whether you like it or not, is what. By a villain who thinks he is doing the world a favor by taking it over and reorganizing it. He’s got your friends depending on you, he’s got your queen slated for assassination.

And he wants to make you his heir.

CJ faces her toughest challenge yet. Her heroic thought? If all there is to save the world is me...

POOR WORLD!

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Fleeing Peace

Siamis said, “Your young friend Liere is not going to enjoy the trap she’s walking into, I fear. But you figured that out, did you not? Why didn’t she listen to you?”

“To snap her fingers under your nose,” Senrid retorted.

“Irresistible.” Siamis smiled gently. “But it’s going to cost.”

Fifteen-year-old Senrid is newly king of the difficult warrior kingdom Marloven Hess . . . just in time to lose it, and find himself running for his life with two kids who once were his enemies. When Senrid is captured he overhears a secret—one he can use against the enemy, if he can get to the right place at the right time.

Now the enemy is from Norsunder, in the form of a charismatic, handsome man named Siamis who can read minds, and who enchants people just by talking to them.

Liere has always known she was special, which just increased her loneliness and sense of isolation. She can hear others’ thoughts, and she senses the real emotions below the façade. When a golden-haired man named Siamis comes to her village and enchants the entire town around her, she finds herself on the run.

Liere and Senrid couldn’t be more different, but their goal is the same, to locate the powerful magic that will unravel Siamis’s world enchantment.

Chased by powerful enemies, Liere and Senrid are tested to the max as they form an alliance of kids to aid them, and gain magical support from surprising sources.

Neither ever expected to discover something even more powerful than magic: friendship. First written when Sherwood Smith was fifteen, this is the story of how Senrid and Liere first met.

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Over the Sea: C.J.’s First Notebook

Sherwood Smith

When Sherwood Smith was eight years old, a girl named Clair walked into her dreams, bringing hints of a world where girls could adventure, live on their own, and best of all, didn’t have to grow up.

Clair traveled about looking for girls who needed a home. She even came to Earth, where she found CJ, who did not fit. CJ found herself not only taken to another world to live, but she became the princess — Clair’s “left hand splat.” One of her jobs as princess was to write down their records. Another was to serve as leader for the girls when Clair was busy learning to become queen.

The girls had jobs, too, using their imaginations and their wits to foil villains who tried to take a kingdom away from a mere girl. From the shadowy Kwenz, a powerful mage with a very wicked past, to the usurper Glotulae and her son Prince Jonnicake, who in their ridiculous way were just as determined to boot Clair out, there were plenty of chances for adventure. And mystery, like why did kids from other times and worlds show up every now and then?

These are the early stories — how Clair found her gang of girls, and how the M girls developed the fine art of the Duel to the Pie.

A Stranger to Command

In this prequel to Crown Duel, Vidanric Renselaeus, fifteen-year-old Marquis of Shevraeth, finds himself sent across the continent to a military academy in Marloven Hess, a kingdom known for its violent history.

Vidanric is used to civilized life in pleasant Remalna—except that the evidence is increasingly clear that the civilization is only on the surface. Too many young, smart heirs have suffered accidents of late, and the evidence is beginning to point to the king, Galdran, who has grandiose plans for expansion.

In Marloven Hess, no one can pronounce his real name, so he ends up being called by his title, Shevraeth. There are no marquises or dukes or barons in this kingdom, and no one has the slightest interest in Remalna. Or in foreigners. Until very recently, the academy was closed to outsiders. But the king—also fifteen, and recently come to his throne after a nasty civil war—wants him there.

Learning about command turns out to be very different than Shevraeth had assumed, and the Marlovens, who are going through political and social change at all levels, are not at all what he expected. He makes friends as well as enemies; experiences terror and laughter as well as challenges on the field and off.

He discovers friendship, loyalty—and romance.

All the while greater events in the world are moving inexorably toward conflagration, drawing the smartest of the young people into key positions—whether they want it or not. They’re going to have to be ready.

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Crown Duel

 Sherwood Smith's most popular young adult fantasy begins with Meliara and her brother vowing to free Remalna from an evil king. War is tougher than it seemed. When Meliara is caught by the enemy commander, the elegant Marquis of Shevraeth, it’s escape or die. Afterward, Meliara faces a tougher challenge: the battlefield is no longer mud and steel, but palaces, the weapons manners and fans. Toughest of all is courtship, when the one who catches her heart is an enemy.

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A Posse of Princesses

Rhis, princess of a small kingdom, is invited along with all the other princesses in her part of the world to the coming of age party of the Crown Prince of Vesarja, which is the central and most important kingdom. When Iardith, the prettiest and most perfect of all the princesses, is abducted, Rhis and her friends go to the rescue.

What happens to Rhis and her posse has unexpected results not only for the princesses, but for the princes who chase after them. Everyone learns a lot about friendship and hate, politics and laughter, romantic ballads and sleeping in the dirt with nothing but a sword for company. But most of all they learn about the many meanings of love.

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Wren Journeymage

The first summer of peace brings Wren on her weekly visit to the young Queen Teressa, where she encounters the derisive, upsetting Hawk Rhiscarlan riding in! Wren races to warn Teressa, to discover he’s expected, which causes the girls’ first argument. Tyron gives Wren a chance to leave Meldreth by sending her on a new journeymage project —to find Connor, who had wandered off to the Summer Isles.

When Wren vanishes, her scry stone abandoned, Teressa veers between regret over the argument, worry about Wren, and the beguilement of attraction as Hawk skillfully upsets her court. Wren has just made friends with some young sailors when they are captured and forced on board a shady smuggler, where Wren learns all about the sea. When pirates attack, Wren does magic, which leads her straight to another confrontation with the villain she hates most, aided by the boy she... what do you call these feelings? Once again the four — Wren, Teressa, Connor, and Tyron — find themselves deep in adventure, as they try to navigate the treacherous waters of growing up.

From the Author:

The Wren books — Wren to the Rescue, Wren’s Quest, and Wren’s War — came out in the early Nineties. Most of Wren’s readers have grown up, but she has a few left here and there. The fourth book is excerpted here, and available as an ebook, in hopes some of Wren’s friends will find their way back.

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