Dawn of Chaos : Prologue to the Sanctum of the Archmage Saga is now available from the Amazon Kindle Store!

Available on

If you’re interested in checking it out but don’t have a Kindle, don’t let that stop you! There are several easy ways to read a Kindle book without one:

• Use the Kindle Cloud Reader to read Kindle books right in your web browser.
• You can install a free Kindle Reader App if you have an iPad, iPhone, Android phone or tablet, PC, Mac, etc. — there’s one for just about every platform. 🙂

The land of Carlissa stood on the cusp of a renaissance. Even as King Danor planned reforms to usher in a new era of enlightenment, however, other forces were threatening to lead the kingdom toward a very different future. That future began to take shape in a fateful confrontation that occurred at the Dawn of Chaos.

The Dawn of Chaos is a short prologue introducing the world and story for an upcoming epic fantasy series. It will be continued in Crucible of Heroes: The End of the Beginning, the first novel in the Sanctum of the Archmage Saga.

UPDATE (May 10, 2014): I’ve just published a second edition of Dawn of Chaos, which contains some improvements based on lessons learned from my first run. Charles’ full illustration is now included in-line with the text, and I’ve made some minor editorial changes (mainly to include some additional descriptive passages and to improve the book’s formatting).

My upcoming Kindle book is now complete! I’ve given it a new title, prepared the cover using Charles’ final version of the illustration, and built the Kindle file for upload. The only thing remaining is to go through the process of submitting the files to the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) system. I should be doing that this weekend, and it should be available in the Kindle store a few days later. Here’s what the title page looks like:

Dawn of Chaos

Prologue to the Sanctum of the Archmage Saga

by Tony Donadio

Cover Art by Charles Imbro

Charles really outdid himself, because the final version of the cover looks amazing. Here’s the “dust jacket” description:

The land of Carlissa stood on the cusp of a renaissance. Even as King Danor planned reforms to usher in a new era of enlightenment, however, other forces were threatening to lead the kingdom toward a very different future. That future began to take shape in a fateful confrontation that occurred at the Dawn of Chaos.

Dawn of Chaos is a short prologue introducing the world and story for an upcoming epic fantasy series. It will be continued in Crucible of Heroes: The End of the Beginning, the first novel in the Sanctum of the Archmage Saga.

Dawn of Chaos is a short work at about 8100 words, easily read in one sitting. In addition to Charles’ fantastic cover illustration, it also features a brief appendix including a painstakingly remade and fully zoomable map of Kalara (by yours truly), and a brief preview excerpt from The End of the Beginning, Chapter 1: The City of Rainbows.

The next step, of course, is to get back to finishing the first novel, which I hope to get out by August at the latest. But taking the time to publish Dawn of Chaos, however short, was an invaluable experience. It helped Charles and I to work out all of the logistic issues, and the production and publishing details, involved in collaborating to produce what I think has turned out to be quite a professional-looking work. I hope you’ll think so, too. 🙂