Earthly Crown

In the second book of Kate Elliott's Novels of the Jaran, Tess Soerensen is pulled between two powerful men—her brother and her husband—and their competing revolutionsOn the planet Rhui, the nomadic tribes of the jaran are uniting the settled cities of their homeland one by one. Their charismatic leader, Ilya Bakhtiian, has his loyal wife by his side, but there is something about her he doesn't know: Tess Soerensen is a human. And not just any human—back home, her brother, Charles, led an unsuccessful revolt against the all-powerful Chapalii empire. Even though Charles was later made a duke in the Chapalii system, his revolutionary bent has not faded, and he is traveling to Rhui to locate Tess and uncover precious information about a past insurgency. Charles's insistence that Tess join him is as strong as Ilya's reluctance to part with his beloved wife—and neither considers that Tess may have her own plans for the future. As three fiercely independent...