Howard Rosethorn is sent on a holy quest - he thinks. Or the Creys' dragon will destroy the world and the end of days will come... or something. He's not sure, since the holy flying cat flew into his face and kind of interrupted the rundown on the quest...King Samuel Horne of Stoneguard is missing and Howie has been dispatched to find him - in the oft-avoided province of Adem, no less. He's visiting the Creys: a deranged royal family consisting of an unattainable love interest, a dead-ish prince and a king that keeps severed heads as party decorations... sometimes with bite marks in.But that's the least of his problems. A prophecy dictates that if King Sam dies, the end of the world is soon to follow - and with politics and casual evil at every turn, Howie's on thin ice. Will the Creys help him?Or will King Sam die before it's too late?

Donna Shannon is a fantasy writer from Cork, Ireland. When she isn't writing about sword fights and dragon-related shenanigans, she can be found either manning the desk at the college medical centre, painting other people's animals or making notebooks by hand to quell her writerly desire to spend all her wages on pretty diaries.Rosethorn is her first novel, or at least the first one she will admit to writing.