**FINALIST for the Compton Crook Award, 2023**
Shade Nox is the only witch in a land of wizards - a fiend, a rogue, a wanted criminal.
Defying those who think her an abomination, Shade wears her tattoos openly and carries obsidian blades at her hips. For years, she has protected the outcast clans who wander the blighted Wastes, but the land is growing more unstable and her blades are no longer enough.
To save her people, Shade vows to raise a Veil of protection - a feat not accomplished in over a hundred years. But the magical Veils are said to belong to the Brotherhood church; if she succeeds in raising one, it will expose their lies. They swear to see her obliterated first.
Treading a dangerous path where allies can be as deceitful as enemies, and where demons lurk in the shadows, Shade chases a vision which could lead to her people's salvation… or her own destruction.
File Under: Fantasy [ Tattoos At Dawn | Underestimated Women | Old Jealousies | The End of Whose World ]
Autorentext
Sarah J. Daley is a former chef who lives and writes in the Chicago Metropolitan area with her husband and teenaged son. She earned a degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Though she still enjoys the heat and chaos of a professional kitchen, she is now writing full-time. She enjoys traveling, creating costumes for comic con, riding the occasional horse, and streaming old sitcoms for background noise.
Klappentext
Shade Nox is an abomination and a wanted criminal. When she is called upon to raise a Veil to protect her people, she discovers a road much rockier than she expected, made no easier by Raiden Mad - Imperial emissary - who intends to capture and imprison her…
Shade Nox is an abomination and a wanted criminal. She wears her tattoos openly as any bloodwizard would, and carries obsidian blades at her hips. She scratches out a dangerous living in the broken Wastes, but now that they are growing more unstable and dangerous, Shade and her people need a Veil to protect them. She vows to raise one - a feat not accomplished in over a hundred years, and never performed by a woman. The Veils are controlled by the Brotherhood, who consider them sacred creations; they would sooner see them all collapse into dust than allow a witch to raise one.
With the help of her friends and allies, and her own indomitable will, Shade stays one step ahead of her enemies. But when she learns the true sacrifice required to raise a Veil - a secret even the centuries-old Brotherhood has forgotten - it is too high a price to pay. Nevertheless, she must pay it, or she will lose everything and everyone she loves...
File Under: Fantasy [ Tattoos At Dawn | Underestimated Women | Old Jealousies | The End of Whose World ]