Weak Men Create Hard Times
A Novel

About this book:

Forty years of peace have made Oakhaven soft. Its leaders trade swords for sonnets, watchtowers for conservatories, and border garrisons for banquet halls. High Magistrate Alden calls it progress; Captain Tomas calls it suicide. At the crumbling Red Wall, a handful of forgotten veterans watch the southern horizon darken with smoke, while in the capital, the Treasurer balances ledgers against the price of survival.

The cycle turns. The nomads of the Ash-Wastes remember what the city has forgotten: that treaties written in ink break before blades forged in iron. When the first arrow strikes—not steel, but bone-tipped and silent—the long peace shatters in a single heartbeat. Now the realm's fate rests on men the world discarded: a scarred captain, a broken general, and a soft-handed boy who must become hard or die.

*Weak Men Create Hard Times* is a sweeping chronicle of collapse and crucible, where civilization's veneer strips away to reveal the iron beneath. For readers who crave the grim grandeur of *The First Law* and the historical weight of *The Accursed Kings*, this is the story of what happens when the bill for comfort finally comes due—and who pays it in blood.