"In The Gifted and The Betrayed, Matthew Dickerson's masterful story-telling and talent for suspenseful narrative draw us into the battle to save Gondisle from the Daegmon Lord. Dickerson brings to the creation of fantasy epic his keen observation of the natural world. Gondisle's woods, plains, mountains, and marshes seem as real as those of our world. Nature is a living presence in The Daegmon War, and Dickerson follows in the footsteps of Tolkien and Lewis in making of fantasy the art of re-enchanting the world. This series satisfies our hunger for meaning as well as it satisfies our thirst for adventure." —Benjamin Myers, former poet laureate of Oklahoma. Daegmons have wreaked destruction on Gondisle. The hope of the land rests on a small group of heroes who possess mystical powers of healing, shaping, knowledge, speech with creatures, and supernatural strength in battle. Yet the combined strengths and gifts of these heroes seem woefully inadequate, while...

The centuries-old war against the Daegmon Lord has been dormant for generations. Knowledge of the Gifts—mystical powers of healing and shaping and knowledge, of speech with creatures, and of supernatural strength in battle—has faded into dim folklore, along with knowledge of the ancient enemy. When a Daegmon suddenly appears out of the old tales, and begins to wreak destruction on the remote villages of Gondisle, the realm is thrown into turmoil. Heroes of the land, led by a new generation of the Gifted, must arise and face this ancient enemy. But their situation grows more dire when the king not only refuses to give them aid, but proves to be under the influence of the Daegmon Lord's servants. In Book 2, Elynna and her companions continue pursuing the Daegmon in a desperate attempt to rescue the realm of Gondisle. The discovery of an old talisman offers a promise of power, and with it a new source of hope, but it also causes dissension within the company....

When Kristinge, a young monk at an monastery in southeastern France, discovers he is the son of a famous Frisian hero and king who died in battle six years earlier, he leaves the monastic life and sets out in search of his identity. Traveling with his old mentor Willimond, a monk originally of Lindisfarne, Kristinge's journey brings him first across France to Denmark to search of his mother, and eventually back to his native soil of Friesland. Along the way he meets the young, decadent, and half-crazy Frankish king Clovis who resides in Paris, and the holy Abbess Telchild of the nearby monastery of Jouarre – two of several historical figures woven through the novel. However what begins as a quest to uncover his heritage and find whether his mother still lives becomes a sort of spiritual journey of discovery at many other levels. Kristinge wrestles with the question of who is he, and who should he become? Is he the monk he has spent the past six years training to be? Or...