The Obernewtyn Chronicles is a series of science fiction and fantasy novels by Australian author Isobelle Carmody. The series has a post apocalyptic setting and depicts a world long after its destruction by a global nuclear holocaust. The series' protagonist, Elspeth Gordie, is a young girl with mental powers condemned by the series' main antagonists, the governing body, known as the council, and the religious authority, the Herder Faction. The novels deal with themes of responsibility, duty, prejudice, discrimination, tolerance, and human and animal rights. Books of the series The series consists of seven novels published by Penguin Books. Obernewtyn (1987) The Farseekers (1990) Ashling (1995) The Keeping Place (1999) Wavesong (2008) The Stone Key (2008) The Sending (2011) The Red Queen (2015) In the United States and Canada, the books are published by Random House. Random House split The Stone Key into two books: The Stone Key and Wavesong. The United States and Canada have also split The Sending into two books: The Sending and The Waking Dragon. Though initially intended to be the final installment, The Sending was the penultimate book. The final book, The Red Queen, was released in November 2015. Setting The series is set many years into the future, where the world has been ravaged by a great nuclear holocaust known as the Great White. The few people left have formed a new way of living, led by a body called the Council. The Council realized that they had not escaped the effects of the Great White completely unscathed, and began burning any humans or animals born with deformities. The Council appointed a fledgling religious order called the Herder Faction to oversee these rituals. The Herders believed that Lud, their name for God, sent the Great White as punishment for a materialistic society. As a result, they destroyed all artifacts of the old world known as the Beforetime. Those who spoke out against the Herders, or researched the period before the nuclear holocaust or its technology, were declared Seditioners (from the word sedition) and were burnt alive. Council law and the Herder Faction gradually fused, and came to depend on each other. If the two governing bodies did not burn the dissidents, they sent them to work on Councilfarms. Orphan homes were set up to house those children of Seditioners not claimed by relatives. It later became clear that mutations of the mind could develop