A rebellious heroine encounters a colonial globe coming unstitched in Jae Waller’s spectacular debut fantasy

Seventeen-year-old Kateiko doesn’t desire to be Rin anymore – not if this means sacrificing lives to safeguard the lifeless. Her only way out is to become listed on another tribe, a one-way trek through the coastal rainforest. Killing a colonial soldier in the woods isn’t area of the plan. Neither is usually spending the wintertime with Tiernan, an immigrant who continues a sword with his carpentry equipment. His log cabin leakages and his stories about additional worlds raise even more queries than they response.

Then your air spirit Suriel, long thought dormant, resurrects a war. For Kateiko, safeguarding various other tribes in her confederacy is normally atonement. For Tiernan, battle is a go back to the military existence he’s eager to forget.

Leaving Tiernan means shedding the one guy Kateiko trusts. Staying with him means abandoning colonists to a death sentence. In an area tainted by prejudice and on the brink of civil battle, she has to choose what’s value dying – or killing – for.