Imprint: Bedford Square Publishers

Category: Historical fantasy

Godstorm

Solitaire Townsend

‘This startling alternative history takes us to a newly-imagined world… The result is a vivid, ferocious adventure’ Kim Stanley-Robinson

‘A highly original, vividly-imagined fantasy Roman Empire where oil is power’ Ruth Downie

A Female Gladiator’s Vow. A Stolen Child. A Storm to End Empires

In an oil-fuelled Roman Empire which never fell, Arrow – a gladiatrix turned governess – must rescue Livy, the child she never meant to love, a girl who could tear down the world.

When Livy is abducted during a devastating Godstorm, Arrow must unleash years of the gladiator training she’d sworn to forget in order to save her. Defying her owner, a heartless Consul, Arrow turns to her ex-lover and the illegal druid underworld in a desperate attempt to rescue the girl she has tried not to think of as her own.

Her search will take her across Londinium, a city of petrol-powered chariots, to the pagan Old Town, and eventually the edge of the known world: the Amazon, where destiny and destruction intertwine.

Facing battle and betrayal Arrow must choose: reclaim her past as a killer—or risk everything for the child who might call her ‘mother.’

She is the Sword.

Category: Historical fantasy

Hardback

RRP: £16.99

ISBN: 9781835012598

Published: January 15, 2026

Extent: 352 pages

Paperback

RRP: £

ISBN: 9781835012604

Published: January 15, 2026

Extent: 352 pages

Ebook

RRP: £9.99

ISBN: 9781835012611

Published: January 15, 2026

Reviews

‘This startling alternative history takes us to a newly-imagined world in which fossil fuels extended the Romans’ conquest of the world through space and time; because energy is power. The result is a vivid, ferocious adventure, as the heroine struggles against a world even more violent than our own— or so it seems until you consider matters of scale, and realize this novel is a kind of allegory for our fight too’ Kim Stanley-Robinson

‘A highly original, vividly-imagined fantasy Roman Empire where oil is power, and one young woman must fight to survive and save all that she holds dear’ Ruth Downie