Age of X

About the Age of X series

Age of X (also known by its first book's title, Gameboard of the Gods) is Richelle Mead's genre-bending departure into a dystopian near-future where religion has been outlawed and the old gods have been reduced to legend -- except they haven't actually gone anywhere. Gameboard of the Gods opens the series with Justin March, an exiled investigator with a forbidden gift for sensing the supernatural, pulled back into service to solve a string of ritualistic murders that suggest the old gods are manipulating human affairs again, more directly than anyone in power wants to admit.

Mead blends military SF, urban fantasy, and mythology here -- servitors bound to specific deities, a repressive Republic of United North America enforcing rationalism by law, and a slow-burn central relationship between Justin and Mae, his elite-soldier partner -- in a setting more overtly political and world-spanning than her other series.

Only two books were published before the series was left incomplete; a planned third book, The Eye of Andromeda, was never released.

How to read this series

Read in publication order: Gameboard of the Gods, then The Immortal Crown. The series is unfinished -- a planned third book, The Eye of Andromeda, was never published, so the story ends without a full resolution after book two. It's a standalone world with no connection to Mead's Vampire Academy, Bloodlines, Georgina Kincaid, or Dark Swan series.