On the surface, Sorken is visceral dark fantasy. The world is the Cursed: a dead country where the only living water is the Basar, a single luminous river that runs out of the smoke-crowned Mount Sela and branches to every walled settlement. Inside the walls, people live; beyond them, the dead walk. The sorken are fast, dry-eyed animated corpses. The beasts sleep as boulders by day and open at dusk to feed. The dreggs creep where the river thins and harden into hamartia, a plate-like crust that grows on the corrupted. Haven, the settlement at the river's central bend, keeps its wall, waters its fields, and minds its children — until men begin walking back from the Verge wrong, drained and grey, and a polished councilman's hidden work starts hollowing the settlement from beneath. Shadows and Rumors is the slow discovery of the rot.
