Valen Books in Order

The Valen books are the two novels of the Lighthouse Duet, with Cartamandua Legacy bringing the full story together in one volume. They take place in Navronne, a kingdom frayed by civil war, failing harvests, harsh religion, and the sense that the land itself is going wrong. The scale is epic, but the voice is very personal.

Valen is a mess. That is part of why the books work.

Magnus Valentia de Cartamandua-Celestine, usually called Valen, is the rebellious son of a powerful pureblood family of cartographers and diviners. He has spent years running from family duty, magical control, and anything that looks too much like responsibility. When Flesh and Spirit opens, he has been abandoned half-dead in the wilderness, he is addicted to the doulon, an enchantment that turns pain into pleasure, and he is carrying a stolen book of maps that far too many people want.

A monastery offers him sanctuary, but sanctuary in Berg's work is rarely simple. The book quickly opens into a maze of secret orders, prophetic books, corrupt institutions, missing kings, and older beings whose connection to the land may matter more than any human throne. Valen is constantly pulled between selfish survival and the demands of other people who need him, and that push gives the story its best energy. He lies, bargains, relapses, helps, and backslides. He feels human because he rarely takes the cleanest road.

Every faction wants something from him, even when he barely knows what he wants from himself.

In Breath and Bone, the stakes widen. Navronne is sinking deeper into war and winter. Valen is hunted by priestesses, princes, registry officials, and forces out of myth, while the mysteries of his family, his bloodline, and the country's broken history get harder to avoid. What keeps the series moving is not just prophecy or politics. It is Valen's slow, stubborn struggle to become someone better than the man who kept running.

These books have a bruised, first-person intensity. They mix road story, monastery intrigue, spiritual mystery, and high-stakes fantasy without ever letting go of the rough edges of Valen's character. If you like unreliable or compromised narrators, myth-heavy worldbuilding, and redemption arcs that are earned the hard way, this corner of Berg's work has a lot to offer. And if you want the whole arc in one place, Cartamandua Legacy is the collected edition.