For Ajax Court and everyone else living in the Arch, monsters are real and they’re REALLY annoying. He is in training to become a Monster Speaker, following in the footsteps of his talented and charming father Desmond Court – who is one of the few tasked with keeping the peace across the Archipelago, the islands united under the rule of King Peter. The peace in question is not between kingdoms, but between humans and the many dangerous leviathans which call the surrounding lands and oceans their home.

Monster Speakers must like travelling, constant hardships and near-death experiences: Ajax’s father has seen manticores, spoken with ogres and run in terror from slavering manbeastes. But Monster Speakers are respected across the known world, and Ajax will do anything to become one! He is not alone; when a chance encounter during his father’s newest mission brings a new friend into Ajax’s life, they are all catapulted into the hands of an angry Sea Lord with a grudge to settle.