The Haven, Book One, The Forest and Book Two, The Journey

The setting is a parallel world, similar to our own yet with a few further advancements in technology. In this world there is a huge forest prison. Roughly sixty years earlier, the government had decided that the prison system was overcrowded and too expensive, so it adopted a ruthless policy to establish the forest prison. People with ten years or more on their sentence were sent into the forest prison to never return to the outside world.
Outside the forest, legends were told of the bandits within and young children were told to stay away from the trees. Within the trees, bandits ran rampant, yet something completely unexpected also happened; organised societies developed. In particular, several days journey into the forest grew the great town of Penyon.
Throughout the tale, different characters living quite different lives all become linked through the forest.
Penyon was founded by the powerful mind of Nazule. Deep within the trees, many of the forests inhabitants communicate with their minds. This naturally advanced form of communication is contrasted against the technology used on the outside, in particular with the commonly used small tablet called the centraliser.
Another powerful character, Coffee, is an old friend of Nazule, having worked together in the School of the Mind before Nazule was taken into the forest as the first forest prisoner, sixty years earlier. On the outside, Coffee also grows very powerful, although she is always under threat from factions of the government and the military, in particular from the leader of the offensive against her and Nazule, Colonel Hakennase.
Colonel Hakennase sees Nazule and Coffee as a threat to his power and the stability of his world. The ruthless Colonel builds up an army, using powerful, destructive technology to enter the forest and take charge.