Songs of the Dead

by Brandon Sanderson, Peter Orullian

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

The dead and the living revolt as the present and the past clash — Welcome to the Strata Wars. Brandson Sanderson teams up with writer and musician Peter Orullian for a mind-bending fantasy that blends music, magic and reality.

A London rocker is faced with a life-or-death choice when he realizes that a powerful society of magic wielders are the only ones keeping London safe in this deft contemporary fantasy cowritten by #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson with author and musician Peter Orullian.

When Jack Solomon, a struggling musician who works in London’s West End, is killed, he awakens to a new reality in which light and music are used to create magic and where living eras of the past sprawl beneath modern London, layer upon layer, all the way back to recorded history.

Jack also soon discovers that many of those who reside in the stratums of London’s past have grown angry with the present world, and that their anger is being channeled by a powerful society of light-and-music-based magic wielders who can cross the realms between life and death, between the present and the past. A past where the dead are sowing revolution against the living, and all of history is at stake.

Welcome to the Strata Wars.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668068144
Publisher:	S&S/Saga Press
Publication date:	06/16/2026
Series:	The Strata Wars , #1
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Sanderson’s first novel, Elantris, was published in 2005, followed the Mistborn saga; the Stormlight Archive novels; and other novels, as well the secret project novels including Tress of the Emerald Sea. Accolades include the David Gemmell Legend Award, Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice award for Best Epic Fantasy, and the Hugo award for his novella The Emperor’s Soul. He has hit the New York Times Best Seller List over twenty times and his books have been published in over thirty-five languages. He lives in Utah with his wife and children. Visit his website for behind-the-scenes information on all his books at BrandonSanderson.com.

Peter Orullian is an American fantasy author, composer, and performer. As a musician, he has toured internationally—fronting various rock and metal bands—written and released multiple albums, and recently founded his own symphonic rock group, Symphony North, which focuses on building trans-media properties to combine music and narrative. The first of these, entitled The Bell Ringer, was recently released as a full concept album, and will embark on a US tour in holiday of 2026. The novelization of The Bell Ringer will release in tandem with the tour. As an author, Orullian has also novelized chart-topping concept albums for Grammy Award–winning metal giant Dream Theater. In 2012, he was shortlisted for the David Gemmell Morningstar Award. He has written numerous short stories as well as several other novels, including The Vault of Heaven, all of which use music as a driving force for worldbuilding and magical systems. Since 2018, he has been collaborating with Brandon Sanderson on developing and writing The Strata Wars series. Visit Peter Orullian at Orullian.com.