The Arcane Pen and Key

Thomas Cradock

Historical fiction

Frontier wars, old gods and the men who walk between them.

Thomas Cradock writes historical fiction about people pushed to the edge of their world.

His novels follow men caught between what they were raised to be and what the world demands of them: a second son buying his way into a war on the Canadian frontier in 1812, and a Norse wanderer who returns from beyond the reach of kings to find that the gods are watching.

Latest: 19 August 2026

Fall from the Frontier

Algernon Fairfax, book 1

A second son. A purchased commission. A war he was never meant to survive.

Yorkshire, 1812. Algernon Fairfax is the disappointment of Gilling Castle: the brother who did not carry the colours through the breach at Badajoz, the son whose father presses the family signet into his palm with a single instruction. Do not shame it. Four hundred and fifty pounds buys him a lieutenancy in His Majesty's 8th Regiment of Foot and a berth on a transport bound for Upper Canada.

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The books

Algernon Fairfax

Algernon Fairfax, second son of Gilling Castle, buys a lieutenancy in His Majesty's 8th Regiment of Foot and sails for Upper Canada in 1812. The series follows him across the frontier wars.

Period
The War of 1812
Setting
Yorkshire and Upper Canada
  1. Book 1 Fall from the Frontier

The Last Myth

Hjolvar Eirikson has walked further than most men dare. Now the boundary between realms is weakening, and something older than the gods has begun to stir.

Period
The Norse world
Mood
Saga, faith and the old gods
  1. Book 1 The Wolf Awakens

The history

Cradock's books are built from the texture of their periods: drill manuals and purchased commissions, frontier winters and garrison forts, village priests and the sagas they could never quite replace.

The heroes are rarely heroic. They are men learning, slowly and at some cost, which parts of themselves belong to them.

Periods

  • The Napoleonic era and the War of 1812
  • The Norse world

For readers of

  • Bernard Cornwell
  • Simon Scarrow
  • Angus Donald