Sabeshya

"With this latest book, Pearce shifts form while remaining engaged with history, memory, and [Ethiopia's] enduring global resonance. The novel blends historical grounding with speculative elements, a combination the author himself has described as fantasy fiction. Yet at its core, the book reads as historical fiction-using imagination not to escape the past, but to reexamine it from a different angle and reconsider how it continues to shape lives long after the headlines fade.

It is a novel that invites curiosity rather than certainty, and one that continues a conversation between history, place, and storytelling that Tadias has long found worth following."
--TADIAS Magazine

Dawit lives in a refugee camp, mentored by the enigmatic sorceress, Welansa, who knows the power of the ketab (healing scrolls), and Enoch, the old general who teaches him "Empty Hand" fighting. After Dawit makes a horrific discovery about his people, the Tamhers, imperial soldiers hunt for him, and he must flee the camp for the great city of buried churches and hidden knowledge, Lalibel. It's here where he pursues his dream of becoming a physician.

But powerful forces will inspire Dawit to lead a rebellion against Mikal Sall, a despotic noble from the province of Brynn, who wants to tear Sabeshya apart and remake it into a state where he stands supreme. To accomplish his goal, Mikal will cunningly fool corsairs and diplomats from the Northern Continent into supplying aid and arms, all as he spreads outrageous propaganda about the Tamhers.

Sabeshya's fate is ultimately up to Dawit, who finds himself walking a razor's edge between his compassionate instincts as a doctor and his talents as a brilliant guerrilla leader. From shape-shifting hyena men to the panorama of massive battles and palace intrigues, Sabeshya is a novel about a unique hero who must choose between the scalpel and the sword.