Deathly Fates

Evocative prose layered with Chinese folklore guides readers along a fantastical adventure filled with necromancy, political intrigue, and blossoming romance. Teen Kang Siying is a ganshi, a priestess who tracks down missing corpses and reanimates them into obedient puppets whom she guides home. Struggling to provide for her family after an epidemic kills her mother and leaves her father gravely ill, Siying accepts a job from an official of the kingdom of Sian, who offers her an exorbitant sum to retrieve the body of a dead soldier from a hostile territory. Siying capably locates her charge, but when she reanimates him, she’s shocked to learn that he still possesses traces of his own life force, or qi—and that her magic has temporarily resurrected him. Revealing that he is no ordinary soldier but Meng Renshu, the second prince of Sian, he offers to double Siying’s fee to help restore him to life permanently, for if he doesn’t regain enough qi to anchor his soul to his body, he will die for good. Debut author Tsai leverages grumpy-sunshine relationship dynamics to imbue sweet vibrancy into the protagonists’ adventure, which reads like a series of episodic murder mystery quests as the two encounter evil spirits on their life-and-death journey across the kingdom. Ages 13–up. Agent: Laura Crockett, Triada US. (Apr.)