The Chronicles Consummate
The Complete Chronicles of A Ballad of Chaos by Ankit Choudhury · everything the saga is, between two boards · Five narrators, and the argument they finish
Every book’s mark is one bearing struck from this one.
— The master ward
All five volumes and the essays, in one book, under the mark the whole cycle is drawn from.
The omnibus collects the mythic cycle. This collects the saga entire — the four movements and the fifth that ends them, with The Anatomy of Chaos behind them. It is the only edition in which the cycle and its human echo sit inside the same covers.
That echo is what makes this edition read differently from the omnibus. The four movements are myth: rebellion, faith, oath, ruin, argued at the scale of realms. The fifth takes the same argument, strips the myth off it, and hands it to two people at a table. Read together they stop being a fantasy cycle and start being what the saga was always written as — a parable, told as myth, in epic form. The gods are the grammar, not the subject.
The subject is a life. The saga is an exploration of what a person is left holding after rebellion, after faith, after love and after loss, and it is built out of what the author lived through while writing it — in his own words, family collapse, betrayals, breakups, deaths, and losses, until what began as journals of pain became characters. Every realm in it is an allegory for something that happened at human scale first.
It is not in print yet, and there is nothing to pre-order. The cover is finished; the edition is not. It will also carry something that was never planned and is nonetheless canon — not an appendix, and not announced yet. Until it exists the saga is complete across two books already on shelves: the omnibus for the cycle, and the coda’s Special Edition for the fifth.
The edition
- Collects — Volumes I–V (the cycle and its ending together)
- Also inside — The Anatomy of Chaos (twenty essays)
- The board — The master ward (the mark every bearing is struck from)
- Voice — Five narrators
- Edition — Coming soon (no date, and nothing to pre-order)
Dramatis personae
- Lucifer the Unbound, and as memory — The Creator's favoured mind, who asked the question the cycle is built on and was exiled for asking it. In the fifth volume he returns without the question, in a world that has no idea what it is holding.
- Uriel the Redeemed — Heaven's arrow, then a man in the wilderness of grief — what happens when duty outlives the authority that issued it.
- Lilith the Veilwrought, and as memory — Cursed to read the threads of fate and believed by nobody. Loyal only to destiny, which is the loneliest allegiance in the saga — and the one thing she is still carrying when the myth is taken away.
- Charon the Ferryman, and as memory — Bound by an oath he never chose, spending every life he loves to break the seals that cage his brother. What is left of him when there is nothing to ferry is the fifth volume's quietest question.
- Manu Elaris — The fifth volume's narrator, and the only voice in the saga with no myth behind it. Everything the four movements argue at the scale of realms happens to him at the scale of one life — the same refusal, the same faith, the same loss, with the gods taken out.
The score
- A Son of Night and Chaos — Volume I · title theme
- A Son of Light and Lies — Volume II · title theme
- A Farmer of Perdition — Volume III · special version
- A Reaper of Flame and Ruin — Volume IV · title theme
The five movements
Each on its own page
- I — A Son of Night and Chaos — Night & Chaos
- II — A Son of Light and Lies — Light & Lies
- III — A Farmer of Perdition — Perdition
- IV — A Reaper of Flame and Ruin — Flame & Ruin
- V — A Harbinger of Dawn and Order — Dawn & Order
Where to read it
- In print now: The Saga Entire — Books I–IV and the essays, in one volume
- And Volume V: The Special Edition — Its text is in print as the coda’s Special Edition — a limited run
- Every format: All retailers — Paperback, hardback, ebook
Where to go next
- The cycle, collected: The Saga Entire — Books I–IV with the essays, in print now
- Volume V today: A Harbinger of Dawn and Order — In print as the coda’s Special Edition
- The mark it wears: The Identity System — The master ward, and the bearings struck from it