Talonsister

Leven remembers nothing of her life before she became a soldier. The training that turned her into one of the Imperium's Heralds, a weapon built for killing, was so harrowing that it wiped her memory clean. With the war over and the Imperium content, she has no work and no clear future. Meanwhile, her fellow Heralds are vanishing, and her own mind seems to be breaking apart. Visions and memories she should not have keep surfacing, and none of them make sense. They point her toward Brittletain, the ancient, mysterious island the Imperium has never managed to subdue. Leven decides to travel to this land of magic and warring queens in search of her true self.

Envoy Kaeto has carried out a string of small but important tasks for the Imperium, most of them unpleasant and all of them done in secret. His latest job is to escort the bone-crafter Gynid Tyleigh across the Imperium. Tyleigh is the woman who created the Heralds, so his employers owe her a great deal. Even Kaeto is unsettled by her ambition. She believes she has found a new source of Titan bones, buried deep in the earth, and her discovery could spark an even bloodier war.

Ynis was raised by griffins and has never seen another human face. She lives wild, as they do, eating her meat raw and flying with her talon-sister, T'rook. The griffins guard their isolation jealously, as the piles of skulls scattered across the mountains of Brittletain show. Still, the magic they protect will always make them a target for human greed. The griffins chose not to kill Ynis when she was a baby, and that decision may have sealed their fate, because the girl's past is coming for her, and it is armed with a deadly blade.

Talonsister is a new two-book series by Jen Williams, a writer honoured with more than one award and the author of The Ninth Rain. It will appeal to readers who enjoy the work of John Gwynne and Andrea Stewart.