The British Empire at its height covered a quarter of the world's land surface. Empire of Ashes is the Unwaking Library's account of that empire's arc — its Victorian confidence, its Edwardian twilight, and the two world wars that burned away everything it thought it was.
Britannia ruled the waves. But even empires built on gunpowder must burn. The century covered by Empire of Ashes is the century in which Britain discovered that the things it had built its identity on — naval supremacy, industrial dominance, the certainty of its own importance — were not permanent features of the world but temporary advantages.