A sequel trilogy set a generation after the events of The First Law and the standalones, in a world undergoing industrialisation. The mills are changing who has money, the dispossessed are organising, and the Union's political structures are straining under pressures they were not built to handle. New characters carry the story - Savine dan Glokta, an investor and social climber who has inherited her father's intelligence and ruthlessness; Leo dan Brock, a celebrated war hero with political ambitions; Rikke, a young woman from the North with the Long Eye, the ability to see the future at considerable personal cost. Characters from the original trilogy and standalones return in diminished or transformed roles. The Age of Madness is Abercrombie at his most politically engaged - a trilogy about revolution, its causes, its violence, and the dispiriting reliability of its outcomes.