''Reborn'' is a 2023 romantasy novel by Seth Haddon. It takes place in the same world as his debut novel, ''Reforged'', but takes place in a different nation and features different characters.


Twenty years ago, the Rezwyn Empire was at its peak in a mad dash for expansion, subsuming city states and ruling with an iron fist. Since then, the True Emperor's thirst for conquering his neighbors has subsided, and the nation has been focusing on managing the territory it already owns.

Izra Dziove is a strix, a clairvoyant blessed by the gods with -- among other mystical talents-- a knack for receiving holy visions from Suoduny, the god of fate. Typically, he uses this power to aid Rezwyn's Emperor. However, for the past several months, his visions have been rendered useless, showing him only a man he is fairly certain is his soul mate. This timing is especially frustrating as, due to a recent attempt at achieving immortality, the Emperor has fallen into a magically induced coma that Izra is powerless to undo. Now assassins are crawling out of the woodwork, the city states on the border are becoming rebellious, and the Emperor's most ambitious daughter, the head Priestess Neala, is beginning to undo the work of the past century.

Oren Radek is the self-styled future King of Merchants. After clawing his way out of the gutter and into a lordship, he has now been personally selected by the King of Usleth to renegotiate the nation's trade deal with the Rezwyn Emperor-- a deal that had been Oren's idea initially, and ''had'' been working wonderfully until a few months ago. Now Oren is intent on finding out why the Emperor seems to have suddenly reneged on his promise of diplomacy and protection for his trade partners.
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!!Provides examples of:

* AssassinationAttempt: The novel opens with Izra being woken by Suoduny in order to stop an assassination attempt on the Emperor's life.
* AccidentalProposal: At one point in the story, Oren knows Izra is infatuated with him, but he doesn't quite feel the same. However, though he doesn't want to ''use'' Izra, he does recognize that having him as a long term ally will help in Oren's future diplomatic and trade endeavors. He asks Izra's sister [[ShipperOnDeck Odrica]] how to demonstrate his intentions for a long-term friendship. She advises him on a public ritual he can do, and the result is an ecstatic Izra gushing in Doskor about his new husband while every Suoduny worshiper in earshot celebrates, and Oren pleased about how well their "friendship ritual" has gone.
* BeleagueredBureaucrat: Mirakel and Paqe, who are sent with Oren to Rezwyn. Paqe is a diplomat who has some knowledge of Rezwyn and Doskor culture and is there to make sure Oren doesn't accidentally start an international incident. Mirakel is a "purser," an accountant with access to the King's coin. She's there to ensure that Oren has what he needs to get things done, but doesn't actually bankrupt Usleth's treasury. [[spoiler: Paque's murder is the impetus for all the characters to flee Doskor, and Mirakel winds up being Oren's most stalwart companion-- albeit one who complains the entire way.]]
* ChildSoldiers: Izra and Luan. Izra was ten when the Emperor took him to war in order to use his visions, and Luan was thirteen. It is implied that this was not at all uncommon during the expansion wars, though the Emperor is implied to have regretted the use of child soldiers later.
* TheCoup: Oren and company are dismayed to find that they've been sent to negotiate trade deals with Rezwyn in the middle of a coup by the Emperor's daughter, who doesn't bother hiding her intentions.
* CourtMage: Strix are purportedly blessed by the gods with mystic abilities so that they may serve the Emperor. They are incredibly rare, and they seem to crop up in Dziove family in particular. Izra has been serving the Emperor with his visions since at least the age of ten.
* CrushingThePopulace: In the past, this is what the Rezwyn Empire did to secure the loyalty of its territories (to varied results). In the current day, Neala openly declares that the rebellious border territories need to be crushed and purged.
* FantasyPantheon: While Usleth isn't particularly religious, Rezwyn is, and they have a main pantheon of five gods, as well as hundreds of unnamed minor gods. The main ones we see reference to are:
** Borviet, the god of war. He is presented as a Boar-Human hybrid, and is the main god worshiped in Rezwyn.
** Zimsmrt, the goddess of death and winter. She's depicted as a tree-woman with barren branches, holding a sickly infant.
** Suoduny, the god of prophecy. He's said to exist outside of time and is responsible for Izra's clairvoyant and mystic abilities. He's the only one Oren eventually comes to accept actually exists, as his intervention gradually becomes harder to ignore or wave off.
* IntrepidMerchant: Oren Radek, who has a grand plan for Usleth's future in trade that involves him personally negotiating with all its neighbors, including the xenophobic Rezwyn.
* RagsToRiches: Part of Oren's backstory. Though his family line were once royalty a few centuries ago, he and his parents were poor refugees displaced by the Doskor's expansionist wars. Oren struggled in his youth, gained success as a merchant, and eventually became the King of Usleth's personal envoy in regards to foreign trade relations.
* RedStringOfFate: It turns out that [[spoiler: Oren and Izra are the reincarnations of ancient kings. One went mad, the other tried to stop him, and they had their souls bound to Suoduny and the astrok-mer so that they could try again. Izra find the situation endlessly romantic, while Oren is perturbed by the idea that fate might play such a strong role in what he thought was his own free will.]] Apart from that, there is a literal red string that signifies a marriage bond in Rezwyn culture.
* MerchantPrince:
** Oren Radek's goal is to become one of these. He developed an extensive plan for trade that would secure Usleth's otherwise-precarious position in the world, as well as render himself fabulously powerful and wealthy.
** King Zavrius of Usleth, to a degree. Unlike his forebears, who ruled through strength and violence, he is more of an intellectual who wants to rule through diplomacy, which involves backing Oren's plan to make Usleth a trading capital and gaining allies through business.
* NonHumanUndead: Six hundred years ago, Oren's ancestor, the king Gedrok Ach Meedin resurrected a dead Gedrok that he controlled like a puppet and rode into battle. In the current day, [[spoiler: Neala wants to resurrect and puppet it into a faux-battle where she can defeat it publicly, cementing herself in the public eye as the true Empress while also giving herself a reason to declare war on Usleth.]]
* OurGodsAreDifferent: The Uslethians are far less religious than the Rezwyns, who have a main pantheon of five gods, plus hundreds of minor gods that aren't mentioned. Despite this, Oren eventually concedes that at least Suoduny, the god of fate that Izra worships, must be real, as it's the only explanation he can come up with for how Izra receives his visions.
* OutcastRefuge: Ostijan, Kiriz, and the other border cities of Rezwyn. The majority of the Empire is incredibly xenophobic, with their term for foreigner ("cizalec") serving also as a slur. However, the border cities are far more welcoming, with Kiriz being a direct rejection of the empire's ideals, and Ostijan being noted as a melting pot of Rezwyn and Usleth cultures.
* PhysicalGod: Played with. The Gedrok are an extinct species of creature native to Usleth. They are enormous cat-snake monsters, and their bodies are made from the Arcane-- a magical substance that modern Usleth paladins use in the creation of magic weaponry and armor. The location of most Gedrok remains in Usleth are protected sites for military or scientific research. However, they aren't seen as anything divine, only powerful. In Rezwyn, where people are much more religious, Arcane is seen as a divine element and the Gedrok are thought to be foreign, "exanimate" gods.
* ThePurge: Neala's plan is to exterminate all foreign influence from Rezwyn lands, which includes any people with foreign blood in them and razing the border cities that have lost (or never had) loyalty to the empire.
* ReincarnationRomance: Six hundred years ago, Gedrok Ach Meedin was the king of Usleth, gone mad by consuming magical Ichor. He [[spoiler: resurrected a dead Gedrok and rode it into battle, causing massive destruction to both nations. His lover and eventual enemy, the Emperor Dziove, attempted to stop him. Their last battle ended in both of their death, but not before Dziove managed to bind their souls to Suoduny so that they might be reincarnated and try again.]]
* SelfMadeOrphan: [[spoiler: Neala's ultimate plan for taking over the empire is to murder her father.]]
* ShipperOnDeck:
** Izra has apparently been telling everyone he knows about the visions of his "fated man" for ''years''. As such, when Oren shows up, the response of essentially everyone Izra knows is something along the lines of "Finally!"
** More specifically, Izra's sister, Odrica is so supportive of Oren and Izra being together that she convinces Oren to do what he believes is a "[[AccidentalProposal friendship ritual]]."
** At the end of the novel, we finally hear from Oren's King Zavrius, who has been mentioned frequently, but never seen. He sends numerous gifts, along with a letter that simply says, "Well done, Radek. I hear he’s very handsome."
* TakeAThirdOption: When it looks like Neala's plan has succeeded, Izra is held captive, and only Oren and Mirakel are free, the two options Oren is given are return to Usleth and have Zavrius support the border cities' bid for independence-- something that may stop Neala in the long run, but will do nothing to save Izra-- or try to run back and save Izra on his own. Oren realizes that there may be another way.
-->'''Oren''': [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney How much does it cost to buy an army?]]
* TarotMotifs: Invoked; Usleth has a strategy card game called Gulek Des that vaguely resembles Tarot mixed with TabletopGame/YuGiOh. Oren thinks about his cards frequently, and has a nervous habit of shuffling them when he's pacing. When he's in the astral plane looking for Izra, Suoduny attempts to send messages to Oren through the cards he knows.
* VenturousSmuggler: Hapina, Oren's ship-owning contact, who is "not quite a merchant, but certainly an agent of trade."
* WanderingCulture: The church of Suoduny doesn't have a stationary temple. Instead, the priesthood wanders around in nomadic camps and are guided by the visions from their head priest of where they should go.
* WarRefugees: In Oren's backstory, he and his family were displaced when the Rezwyn empire attacked their city. Because they lived on the coast, it was relatively easy for his people to evacuate, as they all loaded onto massive ships and essentially waited out the destruction.
* YouCantFightFate: One of the things all the Rezwyn characters appear to believe wholeheartedly, but the Usleshians have a hard time getting a grasp on. In the end, it appears [[spoiler: the Rezwyn are correct, at least when it comes to visions given directly by the god of fate.]]