James Islington is one of the most beloved and prolific voices in genre fantasy and his latest novel is, in the best possible way, nothing like what we've come to expect from him. With Scion, Islington has stepped sideways into entirely new territory, and in doing so, has given us one of the most exciting surprises of the year.
Published by Saga Press in the United States and Gollancz in the United Kingdom, Scion just hit shelves on September 1. It is a fast-paced cyberpunk thriller following a genetically enhanced assassin through the worst few days of his career, set in a dystopian megacity where the rich have bought immortality and someone has to make them pay for it.
I am a massive James Islington fan. His Hierarchy series is an all-timer for me. Last year, when we had a chance to chat with Islington ahead of the release of The Strength of the Few, he mentioned at the time that the third Hierarchy book had no chance of making it out in 2026. I was a tad sad about that until in February when he announced Scion — and then, guess who couldn't be happier?
By his own account, the book started as a holiday side project written in the gaps between Hierarchy edits for pure enjoyment. It is now the first entry in a planned series. The story is as different from The Licanius Trilogy or The Will of the Many as anything could be, and yet unmistakably Islington.
Meet Azure, assassin turned reluctant bodyguard
The world of Scion is a megacity dystopia. Themis is one of 12 cities sealed beneath the Plate, an engineered structure that keeps the weather out and the heat in. The wealthy have access to drugs that make them immortal as lifers who accumulate power across centuries, while everyone else scrapes by. The resulting inequality has produced an unusual democratic mechanism in the legal, crowdfunded assassination of the ultra-wealthy.
Our protagonist Azure is the Keres' top assassin and one of the people who carries out those contracts. He is, well, not baseline human. His revs — genetic revisions both physical and cognitive — make him faster, sharper and considerably harder to kill than most. Then, a job goes wrong, he is injured, and he finds himself assigned to something entirely outside his experience in bodyguard duty. His new client will not explain who she is or why someone wants her dead, only that she has two weeks that need to be survived and that she knows something about Azure's past. An attempt on her life comes within the first few hours.
The mystery of who the client is and what she has to do with everything is pretty much at the centre of the book, and Islington peels it back at an entertaining pace that never lets the momentum drop.
Scion has all the Islington elements of storytelling we love, in its own flavor
Scion is pitched as "John Wick meets Ghost in the Shell," which is very accurate as a shorthand. I also think it needs to be pointed out how much the book feels like Islington specifically. The careful layering of the story and the organic way character motivations surface are very much his style of plotting.
Reading Scion, you get that familiar sense that every detail was placed with intent and you can trust it to have a satisfying payoff. It is Hierarchy-level craft compressed into a much different and shorter frame, and the compression suits the material.
This book has plenty of action, and some very well-written action at that. All of those sequences are great and extremely cinematic. The world is visual to us readers but not over-explained. There is clearly more of the world beneath the surface and you'll feel that in the back of your head. Who knows, that is presumably where the sequels will go. For now, Islington has given us enough and left the rest open.
Waiting for James Islington's next Hierarchy book
I cannot stress how much I love James Islington's work and Scion is a reminder that his range is wider than even his existing fans might have assumed.
As for the Hierarchy, the third book titled The Justice of One is in progress. Based on Islington's own update posts, it seems a 2027 release is possible but optimistic. In our interview last November, Islington loosely put a possible late 2027 date for the title hitting shelves. Scion, being a different thing entirely, is a fantastically good book in its own right and a very welcome surprise while the wait continues.
Verdict
Scion is fast, brilliant and very hard to put down. It is a different kind of Islington book but no less satisfying for it.
The world we have here has enough texture and unanswered questions to sustain a longer series. And Azure is the kind of protagonist you definitely want to spend more time with, while Themis is the city you want to see more of. As a demonstration that James Islington can operate at pace in a completely different genre and make it look effortless, it more than delivers.
Rating: A James Islington book getting anything less than five stars from me? Not a chance. Five stars.
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