To Kill a Shadow

In a kingdom cursed by a sinister, monster-inhabited mist, a determined teenager endeavors to save her sickly brother from certain death. Eighteen-year-old Kiara Frey and her younger brother Liam attend the Calling, an event during which families must forfeit their of-age sons to join the Knights of the Eternal Star, a brotherhood whose purpose is to banish the mist from the kingdom of Asidia. At the Calling, Kiara defends Liam from a bully, and her elite combat skills draw the attention of the Knights’ hooded commander, nicknamed the Hand of Death, who selects Kiara to join the Knights for training in the capital of Sciona—making her the first girl chosen in over half a century. In Sciona, she meets handsome knight Jude, the Hand of Death himself, and the two find themselves inexplicably drawn together. When callous King Cirian assigns Kiara a deadly mission, Jude tries to keep her at the base, but Kiara sneaks off to join the mission anyway, refusing to let Jude and her new friends face the terrors of the mist alone. In this sweeping debut, Quinn skillfully threads Kiara and Jude’s lived-in-feeling romance with high-stakes life-or-death situations, making for an intriguing if familiar fantasy adventure. The cast is intersectionally diverse. Ages 14–up. (Nov.)