The Islevale Cycle (David B Coe) Books in Order

The Islevale Cycle, written by David B Coe as D.B. Jackson, is epic fantasy built around a time-travel rule that hurts from the moment you understand it. In this world, traveling back in time costs you an equal amount of your own life. That single idea shapes the books emotionally as much as it shapes the plot.

Tobias Doljan is fifteen when he is summoned to court because he can Walk through time. To go fourteen years into the past, he has to surrender fourteen years of age in an instant. He arrives looking like a grown man while still thinking and feeling like a boy, and the mission he was sent to carry out goes wrong almost immediately.

The king is assassinated. The court collapses. The only surviving heir is an infant princess, Sofya. From there Time's Children, Time's Demon, and Time's Assassin become a long pursuit across Islevale, with Tobias and Mara Lijar trying to keep Sofya alive long enough for history to have any chance at all of being repaired.

The time travel does not rescue anyone from consequence, it multiplies it.

Islevale itself is a strong setting, a chain of island nations with rival courts, sea travel, assassins, and several kinds of magic. Some people move through distance, some through matter, and Walkers move through time. Demons complicate matters further, especially Droe, whose strange desire to change herself makes her more than a simple monster chasing the heroes from scene to scene.

Even when the series widens into war, prophecy, and political upheaval, it stays readable because it remains close to character. Tobias and Mara are not just saving a kingdom. They are trying to grow up while carrying a child, outrunning killers, and living inside decisions that have already taken years from them. If you like epic fantasy that keeps asking what magic costs, this is the series to expect.