The Ambrose Stories
A dark fantasy set in an imaginary medieval world.
The Cup of the World and its sequels
“The sorcery is in the writing, conjuring visions of fields and woods, lakes, mountains, rural manors and massive strongholds, the views glimpsed through windows in medieval paintings, haunted by the monstrous creatures of Hieronymus Bosch…”
“These are the strangest novels I’ve come across since William Morris’s fairytales; gripping yet dreamlike, frustrating yet marvellously suggestive.”
These three novels can be read independently, but together they form a sequence. They tell the story of the rise of a young king in a troubled land.
In this series
The Cup of the World
The Cup of the World is about a young woman whose runaway marriage becomes tangled in treachery and danger.
The Widow and the King
The Widow and the King is a dark adventure story about her son Ambrose, hunted by ghostly enemies through a wasted land.
The Fatal Child
The Fatal Child is the third and last in the series. Ambrose reluctantly takes up his role as King of a land that is healing, but that cannot throw off the shadows of its past.
Reviews
“The medieval setting for the sometimes fearsome fantasy is beautifully evoked through vivid descriptive passages…”
“…effectively uses every one of its pages, spinning a delicately interconnected tale that gratifies on multiple levels and forming a luminous and memorable high fantasy story”