Royce and Hadrian
Six volumes, one story, and two people I come back to for reasons that have nothing to do with the plot.
This is not a review of the series. It is a piece about two characters who stopped being characters and became someone you return to — and both my sons are reading them now, so I get to watch someone meet Royce for the first time all over again.
The whole friendship in one gesture
Without a line of dialogue
Hadrian Blackwater is huge, absurdly strong, and carries three swords at all times. He is also honourable, trusting to a fault, openly kind, and completely helpless the moment a woman is watching.
Royce Melborn is small, thin, hooded, and has never once had to raise his voice. Not because he is dangerous in a way that needs demonstrating. Because he does not need to.
Hadrian draws the largest of his three swords one-handed — for an audience of exactly one person. Royce’s rolled eyes tell the whole friendship without a word.
Nothing in the scene above matters to the plot. Everything in it is why, six volumes later, those two stay with you longer than the story does.
Why I go back
Not for the twists — I know those by heart
I know the plot. I know who everyone is, I know what happens in book five, and I know why chapter one of book one reads differently the second time. If this were about surprise, there would be no point returning.
I come back for the two of them. For how they talk when nothing is happening. For the fact that one trusts people against the evidence and the other trusts nobody — and that across six volumes neither one ever tries to fix the other.
Both my sons are reading them now. That is the one thing you cannot repeat on your own: watching someone walk towards a scene you know by heart, not knowing which line will be the one that lands.
Six volumes, one story, one order
There is genuinely nothing to choose here
Some series can be read in any order. Some have to be read straight through, and this is firmly the second kind: every volume opens where the last one closed, and the sixth pays debts the first one took out.
- 1. The Crown Conspiracy2008 — a job that looks routine
- 2. Avempartha2009
- 3. Nyphron Rising2009
- 4. The Emerald Storm2010
- 5. Wintertide2010
- 6. Percepliquis2011
What this site does not know about this series
And why there is no rating anywhere on this page
Every other page here carries a number. This one does not, because we have nowhere to get it: across our sources the whole series has collected ten ratings, and the floor below which we publish no score is fifty.
I could paste in listener ratings from elsewhere — they are high, and they would look good. I will not, because the ranking on this site is computed from one set of sources, and borrowing someone else’s numbers would cost it the only thing it has: that every number means the same thing.
So this page is not a ranking. It is a recommendation, and it says so plainly.
Short answers
Do I have to read them in order?
Yes, and that is the only correct answer. The six volumes are one continuous story, from The Crown Conspiracy to Percepliquis.
Is this young-adult fantasy?
It is not written as YA, but there is nothing in it a teenager cannot read. My sons are reading it.
Why is there no score?
Because across our sources the series has ten ratings, and we publish a score only from fifty. We would rather say "we do not know" than print a number that means nothing.
All six, in order
The reading order with publication years, plus the same list in eight other languages.