Rejected by the Artisans' guild, failing at the Academy, scorned by a woman, in a moment of despair Konstantin challenges the city's most feared swordsman to a duel. The young architect doesn't expect to survive, much less to discover he has innate trance-like powers under duress. Now he must flee the city by joining a cross-continent expedition to the fabled Eastern Chapterhouse — an abandoned convent said to hold the key to humanity's survival, on an Earth long beset by plagues and solar flares.

He soon finds that the expedition train carries all the politics of the empire with it: the scheming Chairman who offers him patronage, the quarreling labor guilds, and a worrisome number of soldiers. Nomadic tribes and marauding bear-demons threaten the expedition. And they may well be less dangerous than the lovely, sharp-tongued, and untouchable Sister Josephine, who wields the arcane powers of her Order and is obsessed with the history of the Chapterhouse.

But that history, and the records of dwindling humanity's crucial Lineage, may have been lost for a reason. After a millenium under the punishing Dragon Sun, the ruling religion known as the Discipline is tearing itself apart. Konstantin comes to realize that "fitting in" could mean helping only the wealthy and privileged survive, with thousands of other lives in the balance. He and Josephine must learn to trust one another as they decipher the intertwined threads of lost technology, the Discipline, and the Chapterhouse.

THE BROKEN DISCIPLINE is a science fantasy adventure novel for adults, replete with sword-fights, steam engines, cybernetic demon bears, decades-long conspiracies, mystic rituals, and a strangely insightful small brown cat. New chapters will be posted several times each week.

Fabulous steampunk fantasy cover art by Zharif Hazwan [email protected] !

Content warnings: One character swears occasionally. Violence is committed against animals, and more often committed by them. Deaths and injuries in combat are described.