The Seer is a gripping epic fantasy novel about the curse of talent and the overreaching of power.

Sonia Orin Lyris’s debut novel The Seer follows young Amarta, who has a limited ability to see the future. The future is not fixed, shifting with the changing intentions of the key actors, and Amarta sees only flashes. Moreover, the future is her sole gift; she cannot see the past at all, for instance.

Limited though this ability is, it makes her the target of an ambitious climber. She encounters Innel at the book’s opening, in which he forces her to tell him how to kill his own brother, with whom he is at odds. In an interesting twist that is one part harem politics and one part talent contest, Innel’s defeat of his brother puts him in a position to become Lord Commander and Consort to the Princess.

Not done climbing, Innel turns back to the young seer who got him this far. Manipulating her with mages, assassins, and torturers, he leans on her gift to consolidate his power and discover and end threats to the kingdom. But can the climber climb too far for his own good? And will the seer survive the climbing?

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