Alison Croggon

Alison Croggon is an Australian poet, critic, playwright, and fantasy novelist whose Books of Pellinor follow the bard Maerad and the threatened world of Edil-Amarandh. The Friendship is a short digital tale set before the main sequence. Walker Books released it in 2012 as an introductory Pellinor story. The narrative follows Saliman after he travels to Norloch to study the High Arts under Nelac of Lirigon. Isolated and angered by prejudice, Saliman initially regards fellow student Cadvan as arrogant. Their growing trust becomes the origin of a relationship that matters throughout the later novels. At roughly two dozen pages, the work is much shorter than Croggon’s four central Pellinor volumes, but it supplies character history rather than a summary of the larger saga. The Friendship therefore works as a focused prelude: it returns established readers to Annar while giving newcomers a compact example of Croggon’s concern with art, loyalty, exclusion, and moral choice.