When a chance discovery leads the Guardians of the Heart Forest to learn they face a new threat, they must once again use their Animental powers to defend the forest from attack. But their new enemies, led by the evil Queen Thymera, have far more than simply capturing the Heart Forest in their sights... They want the world - and every living creature on it.

The fight for freedom ignites… The heroes of the realm are desperately trying to sustain the resistance, but the king's armies are at the gates. The prophecy warns that blood will be shed in the battle of good against evil, and that prophecy is rapidly coming true. Keanu is trapped within a downward spiral he can't escape, while his cousin, Soran, tries to save him during a war of which they cannot win. Soon, all of them will have to choose between what is right and what is easy in a fight of epic proportions unlike any they have ever seen. Meanwhile, across the ocean, Reagan is lost within the depths of the Verinian Forest. To outrun the vampire-shifter hybrids that track her every move, she'll have to align with an unlikely ally, and seek sanctuary within the kingdom of the elves… who seek to make a bargain. Each hero will fight for the liberation of the realm, or die protecting it. Friends will be reunited, lost, and redeemed as each of our heroes comes to meet their fate…

The guardians of the Heart Forest face their greatest peril yet! As Queen Thymera continues her conquest of the Heart Forest, the guardians must find a way to stop her before the protective shield collapses. But vastly outnumbered and against a foe that will stop at nothing to destroy them, can the guardians possibly succeed?

Lieutenant Donal Connor has been given the most bizarre of new cases. Four famous stage performers have died in recent months, thee of them in state capitals within Transifica, the fourth in far Zurinam. And now the idolised diva Maria deLivnova is coming to Tristopolis. Donal's boss is determined that nothing like this is ever to happen in his city. Connor is to have anything he needs, as long the diva lives. And so begins a dark investigation through a world where corpses give up their pyschic energy in the massive necroflux generators which power the city, where gargoyles talk, where wraiths work in slavery, a world of the dead where corruption is alive. This is an extraordinary SF novel set in alternate universe quite unlike any imagined in SF before; a universe where magic and the supernatural and the undead are given a scientific rationale and hoorfyingly plausible rationale. The novel's setting, Tristopolis, is the ultimate noir city; an immense baroque creation of haunted stone skyscrapers, black metal and city-wide catacombs. Its hero Donal Connor is immensely likeable and easy to identify with. Even once he's dead.