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.

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Praise for this book

Praise for Kai Ashante Wilson

“Harken. The world is on fire and only Kai Ashante Wilson can lead us. Watch him crush the fantastic into the raw, a blast of radiant language: the man is an atom bomb.” —Seth Dickinson, author of the Baru Cormorant series

“Syncretistic, technomystic, and cataclysmic, vast in vision and fierce in flow.” —Max Gladstone, New York Times bestselling co-author of This is How You Lose the Time War

“Baroque, polyphonic, subversive — The Fall of Elvenesse is Wilson’s muscular craftwork at its finest. You think you know about Elves? Prepare to be shattered.” —Suyi Davies Okungbowa, author of the Nameless Republic trilogy

“Wilson's work is spectacular, with an expert's playfulness. The swooping register changes—switching from epic to contemporary to epic without mercy—hit like nothing else. This novel deserves to be widely read, in a time when half the internet is rereading Tolkien while the planet is burning.” —Emily Tesh, Hugo Award-winning author of Some Desperate Glory

“A road map for survival via community and collaboration despite overwhelming differences.​” —Eden Royce, author of the Shirley Jackson Award-winning Hollow Tongue

“An epic adventure that confronts the racism and colonialism so rooted in the genre without losing the romance, derring-do, and haunting hollow triumphs that make it great.” —Malka Older, author of the Centenal Cycle

“Kai Ashante Wilson continues to astound. He writes with the fervor of a righteous preacher entrusted with the most sacred. Imagine Tolkien composed through the lens of combining Samuel Delany’s precision and James Baldwin’s heart and you get The Fall of Elvenesse. Kai Ashante Wilson is an unapologetic griot and we’re the richer for it.” —Maurice Broaddus, author of the Astra Black trilogy

“Kai Ashante Wilson is a pure-d wizard. The Fall of Elvenesse is a perfect book—if perfect means perfect for you to read right now.” —Nisi Shawl, author of Kinning

“Wilson has woven a fractal tapestry of a world — past mingling with future, exotic magic spiced with futuristic science, gods with too-human needs — and set in it a love story as painful as it is beautiful and complex.” —N. K. Jemisin, New York Times bestselling author of The Fifth Season, on A Taste of Honey

“The brilliantly original and fascinating worldbuilding is a lush background for a beautifully romantic fantasy, and the writing is rich and visually stunning. I am a Wilson fan for life and can't wait to see what he writes next!” —Martha Wells, New York Times bestselling author of The Murderbot Diaries, on A Taste of Honey

“[The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps] shows that fantasy still has some really fascinating places to go.” —Charlie Jane Anders for io9

“Lyrical and polyphonous, gorgeous and brutal, The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is an unforgettable tale of love that empowers.” —Ken Liu, New York Times-bestselling author of All That We See or Seem

“The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps reads like Gene Wolfe and Samuel R. Delany trying to one-up each other on a story prompt by Fritz Leiber. That means it’s good. Read it.” —Max Gladstone, New York Times bestselling co-author of This is How You Lose the Time War

“The unruly lovechild of Shakespeare, Baldwin, George R. R. Martin and Ghostface Killah — [The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps] was a book I could not put down.” —Daniel José Older, New York Times-bestselling author of Shadowshaper

“[A Taste of Honey] tells a story that is as much about loss and memory as it is about the reclamation of one’s identity... a beautiful look at love in its many forms.” —The Washington Post

“Rich in invention and provocative in its themes... [A Taste of Honey is] a model of concise, efficient storytelling.” —The Chicago Tribune

“Seamlessly knots magic and science in a wholly organic way.... The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps will catch you by the throat and hold you fast until the last searing word.” —Alyssa Wong, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus Award-winning author of “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers”

“A vivid and deeply satisfying romance set against a fascinating backdrop, A Taste of Honey will especially appeal to fans of speculative fiction from authors like Lois McMaster Bujold and N. K. Jemisin and will leave most readers agitating for more.” —Booklist, starred review

“This rich, delicately crafted world is stocked with vibrant characters... and supports a powerful story told in a delightful series of wrenching moments.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review, on The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps

“One of our most stylistically and thematically original fantasists.” —Saladin Ahmed, author of Throne of the Crescent Moon

“An enchanting and heartbreaking exploration of regret set within a world of glorious magic.” —Ginn Hale, Spectrum Award winning author of Lord of the White Hell

“Wilson displays his talent for tugging the reader's heartstrings and underplaying hard emotion, and he delivers a poignant and satisfying conclusion.” —Publishers Weekly on A Taste of Honey

“Wilson’s writing is beyond stunning, and the inventiveness of his world, his language, and his dialogue, are only deepened by his innate understanding of his characters, their rich emotion, and their struggles to live and love as they wish to.” —BookRiot on A Taste of Honey

“The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps... is the story equivalent of the shot heard around the world.” —Marty Cahill, BookRiot

“[The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is] a tale which is so dense and rich in its depictions of the various different societies and places that you end it feeling as if you've been immersed in its world.” —Paul Simpson, Sci-Fi Bulletin

“Wilson isn't the first Black writer to demonstrate the possibilities of mixing traditional fantasy tropes with African-American culture, of course, but few have concentrated so brilliantly on the linguistic implications of doing so.” —Strange Horizons on The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps

“At its heart, The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is a beautiful yet brutal fairy tale about gods and monsters, loneliness and love. It will stay with you for a long time.” —Michaela Gray, Geek Syndicate

“Stylistically daring, diverse, & unabashedly queer: Kai Ashante Wilson's A Taste of Honey is the future of fantasy.” —The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog

“Written in a lyrical, song­like style, [A Taste of Honey] has a rhythm to the prose that is tough to suss out, but the effort is well worth it; the payoff is extraordinary and deeply emotionally satisfying.” —RT Book Reviews

“[A Taste of Honey] establishes Wilson as one of the most original and compelling voices in fantasy right now.” —SF Bluestocking




About the AuthorKAI ASHANTE WILSON was the 2010 Octavia Butler scholar at Clarion writing workshop in San Diego. He won the Crawford award for best first novel of 2016, and his works have been shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, Locus, and World Fantasy awards. Most of his stories can be read at Tor.com, and the rest at Fantasy-magazine.com or in the anthology Stories for Chip. His novellas The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps and A Taste of Honey may be found or ordered everywhere books are available. Kai Ashante Wilson lives in New York City.
Title: The Fall of Elvenesse
Author(s): Kai Ashante Wilson
ISBN: 9781250176097
Copyright 2027
Release Date: March 23, 2027
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group
Countries: United States, Canada | Learn more about available countries
Language: English
Format: None available | Learn More about our supported formats
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