The Katar Legacy

The Katar are the ruling elite in a world where technology does not exist for two key reasons: iron is quite rare and there are no fossil fuels. There is what we might call magic, which is fueled in part with ka (similar to the ancient Egyptian concept of soul energy) and in part with qenar, a fuel that can be mined.

Book one follows a number of characters in a revolution against the Katar, including Tsom, a young thief whose mother has been murdered by the Katar ten years ago.