Book excerpt: The people are tinder waiting to spark. His homeland smolders on the edge of chaos. Can he ignite a revolution? The Iron Empire is soft, rotten, and ripe for change. The guilds are repressive. The price of dragon products is soaring. The mage menace spreads unchecked. Resentment builds. One day, a young hero clanks into the capital with a metal foot . . . swearing he'll kick the imperial palace to rubble. Devin, more artifice than mage with his mechanical limb, returns to the empire, his nemesis Captain Vice in hot pursuit. The firebrand mage stirs the passions of imperial citizens under the guise of dragon conservation. We are all like slabs of dragon flesh: once powerful and mighty, but the empire bleeds us until nothing remains but bones and ruptured organs. The message resonates. A rebellion is born in secrecy and treachery. Beneath their cloaks of lies and shifting alliances, mages, gentry, and commoners alike reach for the mantle of the butchered dragon while Captain Vice's steel fist slowly closes around them. Rise up and smash the state in Book Three of The Artifice Mage Saga. Join the fantasy steampunk brawl of metal vs. magic where sorcery is bloody, science is greasy, and nobody's hands are clean. epic, gaslamp, swords and sorcery, wizard, magic, dragons, steampunk, evil empire