The world of the First Law blunders like a blind bull in a china shop into an ever-more dangerous age. An age of towering profits and crushing losses, of grand schemes and petty jealousies, of high conspiracy and low skullduggery. An age…of madness.

The Trouble With Peace ups the stakes for the rogue’s gallery of misfits and miscreants from A Little Hatred, as alliances shift, rivalries blossom, and the stench of coming rebellion hangs heavy on the smoke-filled air of the Union.

Savine dan Glokta—whose golden touch in business was once the envy of the salons of Adua—finds herself tortured by regrets, paralysed by doubts and facing social armageddon. Only with the boldest of gambles can she hope to change her luck. Leo dan Brock, meanwhile, finds himself imprisoned by old wounds and new responsibilities, and burns to have his sword back in his hand. Orso must negotiate the maze of knives that is politics, a task for which a misspent youth of debauchery has left him ill-prepared, with fewer friends and more enemies by the day. And for Rikke, everything is about to change, as the North teeters on the edge of bloodshed once again, and she must master the power of the Long Eye…before it kills her.

The fates of all four become more hopelessly tangled than ever as the old certainties crumble, friends become enemies, and revolution threatens to turn the world upside down…again.