All four published works in the Speaker Timeline -- Disappearing Act is included with The Last Speaker.

A Wizard of Earthsea meets The Man From Earth.

The Speaker Timeline Books 

A handful of names were scribbled in the Book when the Speaker known as the Shepherd finally found it, some of them hardly recognizable as language. After the world was written, the book contained a list of the created, and when the Shepherd scrawled his name at the bottom his name was taken from him, part of the book now, and he, like the other names before him, became part of the everlasting story of creation.

As magic slowly seeps out of the world, the Speaker Timeline follows the Shepherd, from his mountain village in a land now folded into history, down through the ages. Young Jad the shepherd boy, in his first true act of speaking, inadvertently initiates the collapse of an empire. The dust rises again, the dust falls, and the shepherd carries on. Some speakers spend a lifetime learning how to properly Speak some small piece of the world, but the Shepherd, for good or ill, has all of time.

A Note on the Series

*Technically, there are two separate series included, though featuring the same character. Think: Terry Pratchett has Discworld, but there are "Witches" books, or "Watch" books. The Speaker Timeline has standalone Timeline stories, currently The Last Speaker and Disappearing Act, which will soon be joined by Amends for the Everlasting later this summer; and the Origins Books, soon to be joined by The Hole Left Behind, hopefully this coming winter.

Either The Lion or The Last Speaker has been meant as an entry point into the Speaker Timeline. However, readers have expressed that The Last Speaker is a more apt starting place.

About the Author

In 2011, Lee Burton won the Percy Janes First Novel Award in the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Competition, and in 2017 was a finalist in The Writers of the Future contest. In 2024, he published the first of his Speaker Series stories.

Lee Burton lives in St. John's, Newfoundland, where since 2012 he has worked as a freelance editor with Ocean's Edge Editing, collaborating with numerous bestselling authors from across all genres of fiction. Though his stories are diverse, they all revel in the harmony of words, and celebrate imagination.