Saving Crescents

The Story

A Nation on the
Brink of Collapse

Saving Crescents follows the intertwined stories of two public servants: Neil Denmark, Secretary of Foreign Relations, and Bertha York, Senate Leader. They find themselves at the forefront of an extraordinary effort — to bring democracy back to their country, Crescents, and stop its descent into autocracy.

Crescents is a beautiful country with a broken political system — one where there are no laws and no justice, where corruption reigns over every system designed to protect the people. Bertha and Neil take it upon themselves to bring change, but the forces working against them are formidable. Dissenters are sent to the widely feared "authorities," who ensure that Crescents' message of lawlessness is carried out without mercy.

As if the internal crisis weren't enough, Crescents simultaneously prepares to go to war against its arch-rival and neighbor to the north, Ravalia. The conflict makes everything worse for ordinary citizens — but proves a cunning gift for the power-hungry leaders at the top. With the country's future hanging by a thread, it falls to Neil and Bertha to navigate treachery from within and threats from without — and fight the most dangerous adversary they will ever face.

Themes

Why This Story
Matters Now

Saving Crescents is not just a thriller — it is a warning. Written during a period of intense democratic backsliding around the world, the novel asks a question that feels urgent in every era: what does it actually take to stand up for a system that was designed to protect everyone, when the people in power have decided it only needs to protect them?

The story explores what happens when institutions fail, when the rule of law becomes a tool of oppression rather than protection, and when two ordinary people — armed with nothing but conviction and each other — decide that someone has to do something. Neil and Bertha are not heroes in the conventional sense. They are people who simply refused to look away.

At its core, Saving Crescents is about the courage it takes to believe in something bigger than yourself — and the personal cost of that belief. It is a story about power, corruption, sacrifice, and the enduring idea that democracy, however fragile, is always worth fighting for.

The Writing Process

How the Book
Came to Be

Saving Crescents was born out of a simple but urgent feeling: that the political systems people take for granted are far more fragile than they appear. Ishaan began writing the novel at 16, driven by a belief that fiction could do something journalism and punditry couldn't. It could make you feel the stakes, not just understand them.

Writing the book while simultaneously running The Ishaan S. Show meant that Ishaan was living in two political worlds at once — one real, one invented — and the two fed each other constantly. The research he did for interviews informed the novel's portrayal of how power actually operates. The moral questions he wrestled with in the fictional country of Crescents sharpened his thinking about the real ones he was covering.

Each character, each plot turn, each moment of institutional failure was deliberate — drawn from a frustration with the way democracies can hollow out from the inside while everyone pretends otherwise. The result was a book that didn't feel like a debut. It felt like a statement.

The book was published in 2023 and ran for two years before Ishaan made the decision to discontinue it in June 2025. It remains a foundational chapter in his story — proof that from the very beginning, he was thinking seriously about what democracy means, what it costs, and what it takes to defend it.