The Levanthria Series

The Levanthria Series by A. P. Beswick is a dark fantasy saga of British folklore retellings set in an interconnected world of forbidden magic, cursed heroes, and rising gods. Six books, six protagonists, one world hurtling toward an apocalyptic reckoning.

The Levanthria Series is A. P. Beswick's flagship dark fantasy saga - a bold anthology-style epic in which each book centres a new protagonist while the world of Levanthria itself accumulates history, consequence, and encroaching darkness across every entry. Rooted in British folklore and legend, the series takes familiar fabled tales - the outlaw of Sherwood, the witch hunt, the cursed knight, the wandering priest - and rebuilds them inside a shared secondary world where magic is forbidden, authority is corrupt, and no character is guaranteed a comfortable arc. What begins as a series of apparently standalone mythological retellings reveals itself, book by book, to be a carefully constructed epic, with threads from each story weaving together into an ever-darkening tapestry.

The world of Levanthria is one where corrupt empires and tyrannical rule shape the lives of ordinary people from birth. Magic exists, but it is illegal, persecuted, and feared by the powerful precisely because it cannot be fully controlled. The kingdom wages a never-ending war, sustained through taxation, coercion, and the brutal suppression of anything that threatens order. Into this world Beswick drops his protagonists - none of them heroes by nature, all of them shaped by circumstance into something they didn't expect to become. The series is not interested in chosen ones. It is interested in what happens when ordinary, flawed, sometimes genuinely unpleasant people are pushed past the point of compliance and forced to decide who they want to be.

Each book carries the hallmarks of its folklore source whilst subverting the expected contours of the tale. The dark fantasy atmosphere is consistent across the series - fast-paced, visceral, unsparing with consequence - but each entry has its own emotional texture and protagonist voice, meaning the series rewards readers who commit to the full run whilst remaining accessible entry points for those discovering a particular character's story first.

The magic system with consequences is one of the series' most distinctive elements. Magic in Levanthria is never free. It costs the body, the soul, or the moral clarity of the person wielding it, and Beswick tracks those costs over time. Characters who use forbidden power age prematurely, are consumed by corruption, or find their humanity eroding under the weight of what they've had to become. This gives the morally grey characters at the centre of each book a genuine arc of risk - not just whether they will survive, but what they will have left of themselves if they do.

Betrayal is woven into the fabric of the world. Trust is a liability in Levanthria. Alliances form out of necessity and dissolve under pressure. Even the found family bonds that emerge across the series - the reluctant companionships, the unexpected loyalties - are tested by a world that rewards cruelty and punishes kindness. Beswick's background in mental health nursing gives the emotional lives of his characters an unusual grounding: these are not warriors with conveniently suppressed feelings, but people actively processing guilt, shame, grief, and moral injury in the middle of a war they didn't choose.

By the time the series reaches its convergence, the individual storylines have built into something operatic in scope - a world of legend-makers on a collision course with a tyrant god whose ambitions threaten everything Levanthria has ever been.

Books in the Levanthria Series

A Forest of Vanity and Valour (2022) is the first book in the Levanthria Series and the entry point into the world through one of its most deliberately difficult protagonists. Vireo Reinhold is a debt collector - not a misunderstood rebel but a genuinely self-serving enforcer of royal power, comfortable in his luxury and indifferent to the harm he causes. When an ancient spellbook, a ruinous affair, and a forced exile strip him of everything, survival demands that he become something he has never been: useful to others. The book's Robin Hood DNA is apparent in its bones but completely reimagined in its execution, making redemption arc feel genuinely hard-won rather than inevitable. The dark fantasy world of Levanthria establishes itself through Vireo's eyes - a kingdom at war, a court of compromised nobles, and magic lurking at the edges of a world desperate to pretend it doesn't exist.

A Sea of Sorrow and Scorn (2022) is the second book in the Levanthria Series, shifting to an entirely new protagonist and a new fabled tale. Zerina Redfearn has grown up sheltered from the world's cruelty - until the king's forces drag her and her sisters from their home and put them on trial for witchcraft. Faced with enslavement or death, Zerina witnesses horrors that unlock magic she never knew she possessed, and flees to the open ocean with enemies in pursuit. Each use of her power comes at a terrible cost: her body ages prematurely, and the cure she has glimpsed in a vision may not be reachable before she runs out of time. The witch hunts and persecution at the heart of this book tap into some of the darkest folklore traditions, and Zerina's evolution from naïve girl to someone capable of surviving a world that wants her dead is one of the series' most visceral transformations.

A Kingdom of Courage and Cruelty (2023) is the third book in the Levanthria Series, following Orjan Varega - a fallen knight cursed by elven magic into a half-lizard form, scorned by the world and barely holding onto the humanity he has left. When he stops to protect a child being beaten in the streets, a moment of instinct pulls him into the fate of an entire kingdom, an entanglement with the sorceress Morgana, and a redemption arc that forces him to confront whether the brutality inside him is curse or character. The morally grey choices Orjan faces are among the most raw in the series, anchored by the question of whether a person who has done monstrous things can ever be seen - by the world or by themselves - as something else.

A Stone of Destiny and Despair (2023) is the fourth book in the Levanthria Series, centring Jordell Torvin, a former temple priest whose faith has been shattered by everything Levanthria's darkness has shown him. Now a wanderer burdened with a divine prophecy, Jordell must locate a legendary sword, broker peace between warring factions, and fight the corruption spreading through him with every use of his magic. The magic system with consequences reaches its most overt expression in Jordell's story: his power is genuinely decaying him from within, and the race against his own deterioration gives the book its relentless forward tension. Ancient prophecy, reluctant heroism, and a world fraying at every seam make this the point where the series' larger mythology snaps into focus.

A War of Chaos and Fury - Part 1 (2024) is the fifth book in the Levanthria Series and the first half of the saga's culminating finale. Set eight years after the events of the fourth book, it reunites Vireo, Zerina, Orjan, Jordell, and the other legends of Levanthria as they reckon with how the intervening years have changed - and in some cases broken - them. The antagonist driving the series toward catastrophe comes fully into view: Rhagor, a tyrant god who has spent years masquerading as the promised saviour whilst pursuing an ancient artefact that would give him absolute dominion. The gods and demons mythology that has threaded through the earlier books now takes centre stage, and the convergence of all the series' major characters begins in earnest.

A War of Chaos and Fury - Part 2 (2024) is the sixth and final book in the Levanthria Series, delivering the conclusion to every arc the saga has been building since Vireo Reinhold first found that ancient spellbook in a forest. Rhagor's plan reaches its endgame, Levanthria stands on the edge of permanent darkness, and the heroes - divided, scarred, and carrying the weight of everything they've survived - must choose unity over history if the world is to have any chance. Beswick's finale brings together the found family dynamics that have accumulated across six books into their ultimate test, asking whether the bonds forged through suffering are strong enough to topple something divine.