Award-winning author Kai Ashante Wilson returns with a bold new vision of fantasy. The Fall of Elvenesse transforms the genre of Tolkien in the image of N. K. Jemisin, Marlon James, and Simon Jimenez.

Elves have ruined the world.

From their high mountain, the cruel knights of Elvenesse range out to conquer. They pillage, they enslave, they wreak genocide. Always the Elves have taken, never considered when the bill for their crimes will come due.

That time has come. The fury of the world has awoken. The victims will have their vengeance.

A divine scourge of fire sweeps across the land toward Elvenesse, and the last free people of the Nations flee before it. As the mountains char, rivers boil, and savannas burn, the Free Nations rely on the muscle and magic of their strong and runt freaks. But as their one remaining Saint assumes his power, he receives a prophecy: the Nations’ only path to survival runs through Elvenesse. Only by navigating the Elven labyrinth can he win his people’s lives.

Lured into a terrifying inheritance competition when returning home for her mother’s funeral, a young woman must reckon with her mother’s secrets and a town’s past of deathly sacrifice.

Be careful of what grows here…

Maria’s strongest memory of her hometown Talalora is crying as her mother sent her away. But when the sudden news of her mother’s death leaves Maria in shock, she returns. She’ll close old wounds for good and claim the inheritance her mother left behind; the home they once shared and a fresh start.

But Talalora isn’t what Maria remembers. Once lush fields are barren; the flowers are withered. The townspeople are devoted to a lone priest, Father Benito, who declares her mother’s inheritance must be earned. To stake her claim, Maria must brave a series of trials pitting her against relatives she’s never known.

Each trial, crueler than the last, tests Maria in the ways of the babaylan, healers that commune with the spirits. And with each trial passed Talalora’s plants grow faster and stranger. But Maria’s progress brings memories of her mother. Now a childhood friend, a beautiful woman who shakes Maria’s heart, insists her mother’s death was planned.

And Maria remembers the Diwata, a spirit and goddess who’s ensured Talalora’s fertile land for decades. She now wanders Talalora at night, twisted and strange, leaving flowers and ruin in her wake. Maria’s fight for her inheritance becomes a search for the buried truth of Talalora, her mother, and a curse that threatens them all. What’s been buried must bloom.