This rankles them both, and what rankles Sorcha even more is that her husband, Kolya - a marriage in name only, at this point - is, for some reason, fighting to keep Sorcha around the Mother Abbey instead of letting her out into the world to fight the bigger creatures she’s capable of destroying.Įventually, our Deacons are tasked with protecting an ambassador to the far-off desert land of Chioma. Spectyr begins a few weeks after the end of Geist, with Sorcha Faris and Merrick Chambers being dispatched to rid the Imperial capital of Vermillion of various small-time geists, ghasts, shades, and spectyrs. In Spectyr, they do most of those things all over again. To get to that point, Sorcha and Merrick joined up as partners, journeyed across many miles to a faraway outpost of the Empire, fought members of the Order turned to evil as well as several creatures from the Otherside - the Order exists to protect the Empire from these beings - flew on airships, fell in love, had sex… basically, everything that’s done in a fantasy/buddy-cop/hero’s-journey story of 300 or so pages. Raed escaped from an Imperial prison and returned to his pirate ship, Dominion, and Sorcha and Merrick returned to the Mother Abbey to help put back together the Order they serve.

The following review contains spoilers for Geist, to which Spectyr is a sequel.Īt the end of Philippa Ballantine’s Geist, Deacons Sorcha and Merrick, along with the aid of Raed the Young Pretender *, vanquished the geistlord Murashev (an exceedingly evil being), who had been brought into their world by the Arch Abbott - the leader of their Order.

Geist by Philippa Ballantine