For readers of N.K. Jemisin and Rebecca Roanhorse, a fast-paced, anti-colonial action-adventure fantasy that explores twisted power dynamics and the effects of settler colonialism.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Tonia Laird’s Seventhblade, which is out June 17th 2025.
After the murder of T’Rayles’s adopted son, the infamous warrior and daughter of the Indigenous Ibinnas returns to the colonized city of Seventhblade ready to tear the streets asunder in search of her son’s killer. T’Rayles must lean into the dangerous power of her inherited sword and ally herself with questionable forces, including the Broken Fangs, an alliance her mother founded, now fallen into greed and corruption, and the immortal Elraiche, a powerful and manipulative deity exiled from a faraway land. Navigating the power shifts in a colonized city on the edge and contending with a deadly new power emerging from within, T’Rayles risks everything to find the answers, and the justice, she so desperately desires.
Loaded with complex characters and intricately staged action, and set in a fragmented, fascinating world of dangerous magics and cryptic gods, Seventhblade is a masterful new fantasy adventure from a bright emerging Indigenous voice.
When she turns a corner too sharply, her ankle turns over and gives out. T’Rayles collapses to the cobblestone, axe skittering away as she twists in an attempt to lessen the impact as she hits the ground. Landing hard on her shoulder, she throws her weight forward, rolling onto her knees. Pain rips up her leg, igniting every nerve along the way.
Get up. Get-up-get-up-get-up. Her brain is screaming at her as every muscle in her body seizes in a desperate attempt to stifle the pain.
The sound of running breaks through. Get. Up.
T’Rayles shoves her forearm, protected by her leather glove, against her mouth. Biting down, she screams into it. Muffled spittle and curses fly as she clamps down again, her own teeth digging so hard into the leather that she can feel the bite.
But it is enough. For now.
Sitting on the heel of her good foot, she rocks back, using the momentum to push herself up to standing just in time for three men to round the corner to her right. Keeping her weight off her injured ankle, and with her axe a good eight feet away from her, T’Rayles knows she looks like she’s in trouble.
The men take in the scene before them and grin at each other before advancing. They don’t even fan out to try to flank her. Finding her like this, she doesn’t really blame them.
She hops backwards to try to keep the distance between her and the three men, intentionally glancing at her dropped battle axe. Hopefully they’ll think she feels helpless and expect for her to foolishly rush for her weapon, even though it’s closer to them than it is to her. She keeps her empty hands up in a placating manner; hopefully she’s not being too obvious about showing she’s unarmed.
They are already within striking distance when one of the men, an Ibinnashae from the looks of him, his hair cut jagged and short, pulls a small hand axe from his belt. He wears a heavy Ecrelian sailing coat over a simple shirt and pants.
T’Rayles pauses, unsure how to handle him. In all her years, she’s never come up against one of her own people before, barring a fist fight or two. But no Ibbinashae has ever tried to kill her before.
The overprotectiveness of her mother in her first thirty years kept her and the Fangs out of trouble, and any other Ibinnashae in Seventhblade simply stayed away from the dangerous halfsoul when her heritage became common knowledge. And at the Silver Leaf, she just avoided everyone she could.
The Ibinnashae she faces now motions to her dropped battle axe on the ground behind her and then waves his own with a grin. “It may not be as big, but it’s taken care of nastier whores than you.”
The pathetic innuendo and even weaker insult has T’Rayles rolling her eyes, even as they water with the pain radiating through her ankle and up her leg. “Thank you for making this easier, at least.”
“Wha—” The Ibinnashae man doesn’t get the chance to finish as T’Rayles throws herself forward, tackling him and then almost as quickly, pulling him with her as she reverses momentum and rolls back- wards. She lands with the man under her, pinning him to the ground as she locks his arm holding the axe against her good leg. His grip on the weapon doesn’t loosen. A strike to his unarmoured wrist, and then another, does the trick.
Only when he cries out do his friends realize they should react. A hooded Ecrelian rushes to pull T’Rayles off the man she’s pinned while the other, an older man missing several teeth, and maybe even an eye from the looks of the scarring across his face, pulls an old pock-marked sword from a worn sheath on his hip. Wrenching the hand axe from the pinned man’s weakened grip, she flips it so the blunt butt faces out and swings it hard at the unarmed hooded Ecrelian as he reaches for her. With a dull thump, it connects with the man’s forehead and he drops to the ground like a lumpy doll.
The pinned Ibinnashae tries to push T’Rayles off, but she uses his momentum to pitch them both to the side, pulling the man with her as she throws herself into another roll. When they settle, his twisted arm is locked behind him under her knee and he lies prone beneath her.
The man with the missing teeth swings his sword wildly, his stance and footwork betraying him and telegraphing his moves before he makes them.
