The City knows how to survive.
It distributes bread, preserves records, repairs walls, maintains order, and makes decisions without which a shared day would fall apart into separate misfortunes. Everyone has a role, a responsibility, and their own understanding of what necessity requires.
When the Wanderer enters the City, he begins as little more than an observer. Before him are the people whose decisions keep the common world intact: authority, knowledge, trade, law, tradition, care, faith, and necessity.
None of them believes themselves to be serving evil.
And that is precisely what makes the question more difficult.
What happens when every individual decision appears justified, yet together they gradually produce an outcome that no one consciously chose?
When does a temporary exception become a rule?
How much of the human can be sacrificed for the sake of a system that must continue to function?
And does order remain a virtue when the cost of preserving it becomes greater than what it was meant to protect?
The Price of Order is not a story about a simple conflict between good and evil. It is a philosophical parable novel about a society in which reasonable, responsible, capable people gradually approach a boundary that none of them ever intended to cross.
It is a novel about responsibility, power, moral choice, memory, law, utility, and the place of the individual within a system.
The book offers no ready-made answer. It invites the reader to enter the City alongside the Wanderer and watch what happens to order when maintaining it begins to cost more and more.
Book Details
Author: J. L. SOMNRUNN
Title: The Price of Order
Genre: philosophical fiction, philosophical parable
Language: English
Structure: 5 parts, 65 episodes
Length: 451 pages (pdf)
Year: 2026
Edition: First electronic edition
Publisher: Hidden Side Digital Press
Format: digital book (EPUB, FB2, PDF, AZW3, MOBI, TXT)
About the Author
J. L. SOMNRUNN is the literary pen name of Evgeny Leonov, a writer and creator of independent cultural and humanities research projects.
His literary work explores personal responsibility, the relationship between the individual and systems of power, memory, freedom of choice, and the moral cost of decisions that may each appear reasonable and necessary when considered on their own.
He also chairs the Baltic Association for Folklore and Esoteric Studies (BAFES), an independent association devoted to the study of folklore, cultural memory, traditional beliefs, and the history of esoteric ideas in the Baltic region.
The Price of Order is J. L. SOMNRUNN’s debut novel.
More of the author’s books and projects can be found at evgenyleonov.com.
