The Guardian Cycle is a series of five adult contemporary fantasy novels by Julia Gray. Novels The Dark Moon (2001) The Jasper Forest (2001) The Crystal Desert (2002) The Red Glacier (2003) Alyssa's Ring (2003) Setting The setting for the books is the fictional planet of Nydus, with the adventure starting in Vadanis of the Empire of the Floating Islands, a realm dominated by astrology and other means of prophetic divination, to the extent that people are confined as insane for picking potatoes at an unpropitious time. An uncertainty and growing apprehension about the inability to translate the heaven's signs makes the people increasingly fearful and restless. The world of Nydus' most distinctive and influential feature is its four moons—the White Moon, the Red Moon, the Amber Moon, and the Dark Moon. These heavenly bodies' phases and pulls govern the lives of all Nydus' people, particularly the lives of those living in the Floating Islands. Strange happenstances in recent times, mysterious and ancient prophecies, and magic constantly misused are also themes across the world and through all five books. Plot summaries The Dark Moon Adina, wife of the ailing Emperor Dheran, gives birth during an eclipse, at exactly the point in time predicted in the Tindaya Code—the ancient, ambiguous and oft-mistranslated prophecy written on the ruins of the temple at the mountain of Tindaya—thus her child is proclaimed to be the saviour of the world: the Guardian. However, Adina gives birth to twins, one an exuberant, healthy boy named Jax, but the other an undersized and crippled boy who would come to be called Terrel. With the Seers who run Vadanis in uproar about the unpredicted arrival of twins, and disgusted with his condition, Terrel is sent to, and brought up in, Haven—an asylum for the insane, utterly unaware of his royal lineage. There Terrel grows up with his friends Elam—a young boy put in Haven for picking a potato at the wrong time—and Alyssa, a pretty and strange young girl. Terrel is bitter about his and his friends' incarceration, but knows nothing of his origin, until one day when the trio explore outside Haven in the ruins of an observatory and discover the journal of a hermit named Muzeni. Soon after a Seer, Shahan, arrives at Haven enquiring about Terrel. These increasingly bizarre events are followed by Shahan's death, and then, much to Terrel's distress, Elam's death. When Alyssa