Author: joncronshawauthor

Best-selling author of fantasy and speculative fiction where hope bleeds but never dies.

Silent Watcher Is Out Now in Kindle, Paperback and Audiobook

Silent Watcher by Jon Cronshaw is out now in Kindle, paperback and audiobook, narrated by Claire Aston. Discover this standalone fantasy spy thriller.

Silent Watcher is officially out now in all three formats: Kindle, paperback and audiobook.

This is the first novel in my new Ravenglass Guardians series, and although it takes place in the same world as my other Ravenglass books, Silent Watcher has been designed to work completely as a standalone.

So, if you’ve never read one of my fantasy novels before, you can start here.

And if you’re already familiar with the Ravenglass Universe, this book takes you somewhere rather different.

A century has passed since the events of Ravenglass Legends.

The Guardians have become an established institution. They were founded to watch without shaping, protect without ruling, and preserve the truth.

But institutions change.

And sometimes the people tasked with protecting the truth become very good at controlling it.

Composite promotional image for Silent Watcher by Jon Cronshaw, showing the fantasy novel as both a Kindle edition and paperback. The cover features a cloaked woman in a dark medieval street beneath a full moon, with a wyvern flying overhead and warm torchlight glowing from nearby buildings.

A Fantasy Spy Thriller

Silent Watcher follows Anselma Versen, a Watcher sent to the isolated town of Halborg under a false name.

Her mission appears straightforward.

A fellow Guardian is dead.

The official report says it was an accident.

Anselma quickly becomes convinced it was murder.

But Halborg is a town where everything feels slightly wrong.

The streets have been scrubbed clean. Witnesses give suspiciously similar answers. Records disappear. People seem to know more than they are willing to say.

Then Anselma discovers reports carrying her own signature.

Reports authorising operations she never witnessed.

Some are dated to days she cannot remember.

Someone knew she was coming.

Someone has already decided what she is supposed to discover.

And the last Watcher who asked these questions is already dead.

Get your copy.

Espionage in a Fantasy World

With Silent Watcher, I wanted to write something that felt closer to an espionage novel than a traditional quest fantasy.

There are no armies marching across continents here. No chosen one setting out to defeat an ancient evil.

Instead, the danger lies in reports, testimony, missing documents and carefully constructed lies.

Anselma is trained to observe.

Her job is to establish what happened and report the truth.

The problem is that she works for an organisation that may have its own definition of what the truth is allowed to be.

That made Silent Watcher a chance for me to focus on questions of institutional loyalty, secrecy, surveillance and the ways organisations protect themselves.

What happens when the system you trust tells you that the evidence in front of you cannot possibly be true?

And what do you do when telling the truth could make you the next problem the institution needs to remove?

The Beginning of Ravenglass Guardians

Silent Watcher is also the first book in Ravenglass Guardians.

The series will consist of seven standalone novels, each following a different branch of the Guardian Order during a growing internal schism.

Each book will tell its own complete story with its own protagonist, setting and central conflict.

At the same time, the novels will gradually reveal a much larger struggle over what the Guardians are supposed to be.

Protectors.

Observers.

Judges.

Or rulers.

Silent Watcher approaches that conflict through espionage and psychological suspense. Other books in the series will take on very different styles, including military fantasy, ethical and medical dilemmas, legal conflict and other corners of the Ravenglass world.

You won’t need to read every book to understand an individual novel, but readers who follow the whole series will see the larger crisis developing from several different perspectives.

The Audiobook, Narrated by Claire Aston

I’m especially pleased that the audiobook edition is launching alongside the Kindle and paperback editions.

Silent Watcher is narrated by Claire Aston, who has done a fantastic job bringing Anselma and the inhabitants of Halborg to life.

This is a story built around suspicion, uncertainty and the things people leave unsaid, so the performance matters enormously.

Claire captured that atmosphere beautifully.

If you prefer to experience your fantasy through audio, the complete audiobook is available now.

What to Expect from Silent Watcher

If you pick up Silent Watcher, expect a slow-burning mystery built around secrets, deception and institutional betrayal.

At its heart, it’s a fantasy spy thriller.

It’s about a professional investigator entering a place where everyone appears to be lying, only to realise that the conspiracy may extend far beyond the town she was sent to investigate.

If you enjoy the political and institutional tension of Seth Dickinson, the espionage of John le Carré, or the morally complicated fantasy of K. J. Parker, Silent Watcher should be right up your street.

A Dead Agent. A Silent Town. A Conspiracy Written in Her Own Hand.

Watcher Anselma Versen arrives in Halborg under a false name to investigate a colleague’s death.

The official report calls it an accident.

The evidence says murder.

The streets have been scrubbed clean. Witnesses repeat the same rehearsed answers. Records vanish overnight. Then Anselma finds reports bearing her signature, authorising operations she never witnessed and dated to days she cannot remember.

Someone knew she was coming.

Someone has already decided what she will find.

The last Watcher who asked these questions is already dead.

As Anselma pulls at the threads, she uncovers a truth buried at the heart of the Guardian Order itself. The rebellion she was sent to document may never have been real.

And if her role in the conspiracy was written before she arrived, she may not be meant to leave Halborg alive.

Silent Watcher is available now in Kindle, paperback and audiobook.

I hope you enjoy your visit to Halborg.

Just don’t believe everything you’re told.

Get your copy.

40% Into The Hammer and the Crown & Returning to Wyvern Academy | Author Diary, September 4, 2026

Jon Cronshaw reaches 40% of The Hammer and the Crown, returns to Wyvern Academy, and shares his thoughts on finishing Will Wight’s Cradle series.

This week, I’m around 40% of the way through my draft of The Hammer and the Crown, book five in my Ravenglass Legends series.

The story is gathering momentum, and I talk about how the draft is progressing as I move deeper into Ragnar and Maja’s next adventure.

I’ve also returned to an older project, Wyvern Academy, a follow-up to my Wyvern Rider novella for Patreon.

On the reading side, I’m nearing the end of Will Wight’s Cradle series. I’m now on the final book and have been hugely impressed by how the series has developed.

Wight has done a fantastic job of building the characters, escalating the stakes and improving his craft across twelve books while keeping the story compulsively readable.

Read Wyvern Rider for free!

I’ve just unlocked the complete Wyvern Rider on Patreon.

And I’ve made the entire collection public, so you can read it right now for free.

No payment. No Patreon sign-up. No account required.

Wyvern Rider follows Irina, a young woman whose life changes when she discovers an injured wyvern hatchling beside a stream.

She names him Nim.

But the connection between them soon becomes something far deeper. Irina can sense his thoughts and emotions, marking her as one of the rare few capable of becoming a wyvern rider.

What begins as a secret friendship becomes a story of flight, courage, sacrifice and finding the path you were meant to follow.

If you fancy some wyverns, adventure and an emotional coming-of-age fantasy, you can read the complete novella now.

READ WYVERN RIDER FREE.

Happy reading,

Six of Swords Finished & 25K Into The Hammer and the Crown | Author Diary, August 26, 2026

Jon Cronshaw finishes Six of Swords, reaches 25,000 words on Ravenglass Legends book five, and discusses Will Wight’s Cradle series.

This week, I’ve finished Six of Swords and sent it off for editing, bringing another Ravenglass Chronicles novella to the next stage of production.

I’ve also made good progress on The Hammer and the Crown, book five in the Ravenglass Legends series. I’m now around 25,000 words into the draft as Ragnar and Maja’s story continues.

I also talk about my ongoing readthrough of Will Wight’s Cradle series. I’m currently on book eight, Bloodline, and thoroughly enjoying it.

One of the things that has stood out is how much Wight’s craft develops as the series progresses, particularly in terms of pacing, character work and handling an increasingly large story without losing momentum.

Why Staged Rebellions Make Great Political Fantasy

What if a rebellion wasn’t entirely real? A look at agent provocateurs, manufactured unrest, institutional power, and the ideas behind the fantasy spy thriller Silent Watcher.

Here’s a question I’ve found myself thinking about a lot recently:

How would you know if a rebellifon was real?

Not in a conspiracy-theory sense.

Most protests, uprisings, and political movements are exactly what they appear to be: ordinary people reacting to things that matter to them.

But history contains plenty of examples where authorities didn’t simply respond to unrest.

They helped create it.

And once you start thinking about that possibility, it raises some uncomfortable questions.

One of the oldest political tricks is the agent provocateur.

The basic idea is simple.

A group is angry but largely harmless.

Someone infiltrates it.

They encourage more extreme actions.

Eventually something happens that justifies arrests, crackdowns, or new powers.

The clever part is that the resulting events are often real.

The broken window is real.

The violence is real.

The arrests are real.

The official report is largely accurate.

What gets lost is the question of how events reached that point in the first place.

The record shows what happened.

It doesn’t necessarily show who helped make it happen.

The idea becomes more interesting when you stop thinking about individual provocateurs and start thinking about institutions.

Imagine an organisation whose purpose depends on a particular threat existing.

If the threat disappears, people start asking questions.

Why do we need this organisation?

Why does it have so much authority?

Why does it need so many resources?

A small amount of instability can be surprisingly useful in that situation.

Fear makes people grateful for protection.

A frightened population rarely questions the people promising to keep them safe.

I’m not suggesting every institution operates this way.

Far from it.

But it’s easy to see how an organisation could gradually drift from managing a problem to needing the problem.

And once that happens, the line between tolerating unrest and encouraging it becomes dangerously thin.

What makes a staged uprising so effective is that it looks exactly like the real thing.

The evidence is always ambiguous.

A masked protester escapes.

A response arrives suspiciously quickly.

Certain people seem unusually prepared.

Individually, none of those things prove anything.

A genuine uprising could produce the same evidence.

That’s what makes it so difficult for an observer.

They see a pattern.

They sense something isn’t right.

But they can’t prove it.

And the longer they spend trying, the more they start questioning themselves.

Was it really staged?

Or am I seeing patterns that aren’t there?

That’s a very lonely position to occupy.

This was one of the ideas that eventually became Silent Watcher.

The protagonist, Anselma, belongs to an order whose job is to observe events and create the official record.

She’s sent to investigate the aftermath of an uprising in a quiet provincial town.

According to the official report, the unrest has already been dealt with.

Case closed.

The problem is that what she sees doesn’t match what she’s been told.

The witnesses feel rehearsed.

The evidence doesn’t quite fit.

And the deeper she digs, the more she starts wondering whether the rebellion she was sent to document was ever entirely real in the first place.

Whether it was managed.

Encouraged.

Or even created.

What interested me wasn’t the conspiracy itself.

It was the experience of being the person trying to work out whether the conspiracy exists at all.

Because that’s the real problem.

If you were standing in the middle of a staged uprising, surrounded by people whose fear was completely genuine, how would you know?

And if you couldn’t prove it, would anyone believe you?

Silent Watcher is a standalone fantasy spy thriller about secrets, deception, and institutional betrayal.

For readers of Seth Dickinson, John le Carré, and K. J. Parker.

Get your copy.

Six of Swords & Exploring Arthurian Britain | August 21, 2026

This week I reach 17 chapters of Six of Swords, work on Arthurian prequel The Last Eagle, and visit Lammerside Castle and Pendragon Castle for inspiration.

This week I’ve continued making progress on Six of Swords and now have 17 chapters drafted. The book is moving along well, and I’m getting close to the final stretch.

I’ve also been working on The Last Eagle, a prequel novella for a potential new Arthurian Britain series. The idea is to take the legends of Arthur and place them in a grittier, more grounded post-Roman Britain, while still keeping the heroic and mythic elements that make the stories so enduring.

That project also tied in nicely with a couple of recent visits to Lammerside Castle and Pendragon Castle. Both places have plenty of history and atmosphere, and Pendragon in particular comes with its own Arthurian associations.

So this week’s diary is a mix of Ravenglass progress, new Arthurian ideas, and a bit of real-world historical inspiration.

Family History, Ruined Castles and a Cumbrian Adventure

A weekend trip through Cumbria tracing my wife’s Wharton family ancestry, from Lammerside Castle and Wharton Hall to rebellion, exile and a lost fortune.

This past weekend, my wife and I went on a bit of an adventure into her family history.

She’s been researching her ancestry recently and uncovered the story of the Wharton family in Cumbria. It turns out she has aristocratic lineage, although that particular chapter of the family history came to a fairly dramatic end.

Ruins of Lammerside Castle standing on a grassy hillside in Cumbria beneath a grey, overcast sky.

One of her ancestors found himself on the wrong side of the Jacobite rising and eventually ended up living in Spain, with the family lands seized by the Crown. By all accounts, he was also a gambler with a taste for extravagant living, which probably didn’t help matters.

So, in the space of a generation, an aristocratic family went from landowners to tenants of the Lowthers, with the estate and fortune largely gone.

You really couldn’t make it up.

Stone doorway leading into the ruined interior of Lammerside Castle, with crumbling arches, exposed masonry and rubble covering the floor.

We decided to visit some of the places connected with the family, starting with Wharton Hall, where later generations lived. The hall is still standing, although it’s on private land, so we could only see it from a distance.

Before Wharton Hall, though, the family had a castle.

Or, at least, what remains of one.

Ruined stone walls of Lammerside Castle rising from an overgrown grassy hillside, with open countryside visible through the broken structure beneath a cloudy sky.

We visited the ruins of Lammerside Castle, where part of the central keep is still standing in the Cumbrian landscape. These days, its primary line of defence appears to be a field full of rather standoffish cows.

We wandered around the ruins, had our lunch there and took in the surrounding valley and the view towards Hunger Fell.

It was beautiful, but there was something quite sad about it too. You’re standing beside the remains of a home that once represented wealth, power and permanence, knowing that within a few generations nearly all of it had disappeared.It was beautiful, but there was something quite sad about it too. You’re standing beside the remains of a home that once represented wealth, power and permanence, knowing that within a few generations nearly all of it had disappeared.

Naturally, as a fantasy writer, my brain immediately started filing things away for future use.

Ruined castles. Disgraced families. Confiscated estates. Exile. Gambling. Rebellion. Generational decline.

There’s probably a novel hiding in there somewhere.

Ruins of Pendragon Castle standing in a grassy field in Cumbria, surrounded by trees and rolling hills beneath a heavy grey sky.

While we were in the area, we also visited nearby Pendragon Castle, another atmospheric ruin with an appropriately legendary name. We crawled through a low tunnel to explore the ruins, only to notice when we were on our way out that the ruins were closed to the public. Oops.  

It was a fascinating weekend and a reminder that sometimes the best story fuel is sitting quietly in the landscape, waiting for you to notice it.

Close view of the crumbling stone walls and narrow openings of Pendragon Castle, with weathered masonry rising beneath a grey, overcast sky.

Halfway Through Six of Swords, Revisiting Old Stories & a Cradle Craft Lesson | Author Diary, August 14, 2026

This week: halfway through Six of Swords, revisiting The Hammer and the Crown, publishing Blind Sight, returning to Black Death and reading Ghostwater by Will Wight.

This week I’ve been making good progress on Six of Swords.

I’m 12 chapters into the draft, which probably puts me somewhere around the halfway point.

I’ve also been going back over what I’ve written so far for The Hammer and the Crown, continuing work on the next Ravenglass Legends novel.

One of the more satisfying things this week has been returning to older projects. I revisited Blind Sight, a prequel novella to Blind Gambit that I originally abandoned back in 2018. I’ve finally finished it and published it on Patreon.

I’ve also been working through another story from my open projects folder, this time set in the Black Death world, which should hopefully be ready next week.

On the reading front, I’m continuing with Will Wight’s Cradle series and have now reached Book Five, Ghostwater. I’m really enjoying the series, and I’ve also finally worked out why I struggled to follow parts of the second book, Soulsmith. It turned out to be a useful lesson in storytelling craft.

The Best Fantasy Novels About Secrets, Records, and Power

Looking for fantasy novels where information is the battlefield? Discover five fantasy books about secrets, espionage, bureaucracy, political intrigue, and the struggle to control the truth.

Most fantasy stories are ultimately about power.

Armies clash. Heroes fight villains. Kingdoms rise and fall.

But some of the most interesting fantasy novels I’ve read are about information.

Who controls it.

Who hides it.

Who gets to decide what’s true.

In these books, the decisive battles aren’t fought with swords. They’re fought with records, secrets, bureaucracy, manipulation, and the ability to shape what people believe.

If that sounds like your sort of thing, here are five books worth checking out.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant — Seth Dickinson

This is probably the clearest example of what I’m talking about.

Baru comes from a conquered people and decides she’s going to destroy the empire that took her homeland.

The twist is that she doesn’t do it with an army.

She does it through administration. Tax policy. Economics. Bureaucracy.

It’s a novel where financial systems are weapons and accounting can be more dangerous than a sword.

What makes the book so compelling is the cost. To use the empire’s tools, Baru has to understand them. To understand them, she has to become part of them.

The result is one of the most devastating political fantasies I’ve ever read.

Get Your COpy.

Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City — K. J. Parker

You could put several K. J. Parker novels on this list, but this is probably the easiest place to start.

The protagonist isn’t a great warrior or a chosen hero. He’s an engineer.

When a city comes under threat, he survives through logistics, planning, deception, and sheer nerve.

The joy of the novel is watching an intelligent person solve impossible problems.

The horror is realising how easily practical solutions can become moral compromises.

Parker understands better than almost anyone that institutions often run on paperwork, procedure, and people convincing themselves they’re being reasonable.

Get your copy.

City of Stairs — Robert Jackson Bennett

On the surface, this is a murder mystery.

Underneath, it’s a story about history.

The world was once ruled by gods. The gods are gone, and the empire that defeated them has spent generations controlling how that past is remembered.

Archives are censored. Knowledge is restricted. Entire versions of history are treated as dangerous.

The central conflict isn’t simply who committed a murder.

It’s who gets to decide which stories survive.

Get your copy.

A Shadow in Summer — Daniel Abraham

This is the quietest book on the list.

It’s also one of the most rewarding.

Abraham is interested in leverage rather than spectacle. Most of the important moments involve negotiations, agreements, obligations, and people understanding things their opponents don’t.

Very little is settled by violence.

Almost everything is settled by information.

What I love about Abraham’s work is that he never loses sight of the human cost. These aren’t abstract political manoeuvres. They’re choices that affect real people.

Get your copy.

Silent Watcher — Jon Cronshaw

Book cover for Silent Watcher by Jon Cronshaw. In a narrow medieval alley at night, a young woman in a dark hooded cloak looks anxiously over her shoulder. Warm light spills from windows on either side, contrasting with the cold blue moonlight overhead. A wyvern-like dragon with glowing eyes spreads its wings between the rooftops, silhouetted against a full moon. Mist curls along the cobbled street, creating a tense, atmospheric mood. The title Silent Watcher appears in large silver lettering at the bottom, with the subtitle A Ravenglass Guardians Novel.

I hesitated to include my own book, but the truth is that the four novels above helped shape what I was trying to do with Silent Watcher.

The story follows Anselma, a member of an order responsible for observing events and creating the official record.

She arrives in a quiet town to investigate the death of another Watcher.

The official report says everything has been resolved.

The evidence suggests otherwise.

Then she discovers reports carrying her own signature authorising actions she has no memory of taking.

Like the books above, it’s a story where information is the battleground.

The central question isn’t who has the strongest army.

It’s who controls the truth.

Get your copy.

If you’ve read any of these books, I’d love to know what you thought of them.

And if you’ve got recommendations for fantasy novels where information, bureaucracy, espionage, or institutional power sit at the heart of the story, let me know. I’m always looking for more.

Note: This post uses Amazon affiliate links.

Lake District Adventure Week: Sailing, Canoeing and Fell Walking

A week of adventure in the Lake District with Galloway’s, including sailing, canoeing, fell walking, Rydal Cave and plenty of new experiences.

I didn’t do any writing last week.

And, for once, I’m very happy about that.

I spent the week in the Lake District on an adventure week with Galloway’s, a charity supporting blind and visually impaired people.

We were based around Coniston, and the week was packed with activities. It was a chance to get outdoors, try some new things, meet other visually impaired people, and learn how they approach activities that I’d either never tried before or hadn’t thought much about doing without sight.

One of the first adventures was canoeing out on the lake.

We used a tethered raft made from two three-person canoes tied together, which gave us a stable platform for getting out onto the water. The lake itself was surprisingly warm, certainly warmer than I’d expected.

There was plenty of walking too.

Approaching the summit of Loughrigg Fell in the Lake District, with a rocky ridge and grassy path disappearing into low cloud and mist.

We climbed Loughrigg Fell and visited Rydal Cave, which made for a fantastic day out. We also walked around Tarn Hows and did another walk out towards Beacon Tarn.

Being in the Lake District in good weather is always impressive, but spending so much of the week outside, moving through the landscape rather than simply visiting somewhere, gave me a very different experience of it.

View from the summit of Loughrigg Fell in the Lake District, looking across a green valley, lake and surrounding fells beneath dramatic low clouds.

The highlight, though, was sailing.

We went out on a Dart catamaran in some very windy conditions.

And it was brilliant.

At one point, we apparently hit around 32 knots. I can’t verify that personally because I was rather occupied with hanging on, but it certainly felt fast.

Really fast.

Inside Rydal Cave in the Lake District, with visitors silhouetted against the bright cave entrance and reflections on the wet rocky floor.

The combination of the wind, the movement of the boat and the water rushing past was exhilarating. Of everything we did during the week, sailing was the thing that immediately made me think: I need to do more of this.

So I’m now going to have a look at what sailing opportunities there are closer to home.

View across Tarn Hows in the Lake District, surrounded by lush green ferns, trees and woodland beneath a cloudy grey sky.

One of the best parts of the week wasn’t any particular activity, though. It was getting to know the other people there.

It was interesting hearing about how other blind and visually impaired people do things, what activities they’re involved with, and the opportunities that are out there if you know where to look.

I came away with quite a few ideas for things I’d like to try.

And, inevitably, plenty of story fuel.

Jon Cronshaw standing beside Beacon Tarn in the Lake District, with green fells and distant mountains beneath a dramatic cloudy sky.

There’s something useful about getting away from the desk and having completely different experiences. The physical sensations of being on a catamaran in high winds, scrambling up a fell, entering a cave or paddling across a lake are the sort of details that eventually find their way into stories, even when you’re not consciously looking for them.

So, no words written last week.

But after a fantastic week in the Lakes, I think the break was probably worth far more than another few chapters.

Now it’s back to the writing.

Jon