In Meyer’s telling, the girl known in the original as “the miller’s daughter” finally gets her own name, and the power that comes with it. A propulsive mystery mixed with a moving coming-of-age tale and a touch of romance, “Beasts of Prey” asks: When we go into the jungle, who will we be when we come out? Gray pivots expertly between Koffi’s and Ekon’s points of view, while also sprinkling in pieces of an older tale that may hold the key to their quest. Their journey takes them deep into the forbidden wilderness surrounding the city, where they encounter gods, goddesses and a host of fearsome flora and fauna - all part of the rich Pan-African mythology that grounds the world of Lkossa. When an accident at the zoo upends their worlds, Koffi and Ekon find themselves bound in a mutual quest - she to win her freedom, he to reclaim his place among the Six - that hinges upon finding the Shetani.

Ekon is an orphan, raised in the city’s temple, who has spent his life training to become a member of the elite militia the Sons of the Six, just like his father and older brother. Koffi is an indentured servant at the Night Zoo, a rundown menagerie where she and her mother are enslaved. Full of complex characters and unexpected twists, this moving book explores what it means to rebuild and how much history depends on who is left to tell it.īut Koffi and Ekon know little of this history. “Year of the Reaper” is a refreshing stand-alone novel in a sea of fantasy series, and Lucier does a good job pacing its central whodunit, up until the frantic conclusion. Concerned, Cas teams up with Lena, a headstrong historian and erstwhile horse thief, to figure out who is killing off members of the royal household - and, more important, why. But soon other members of the court start turning up dead, marked by strange gold coins and trailing whispers of a white-haired killer. When an assassin makes an attempt on the life of the crown prince, who is only an infant, Cas swoops in to save the day.

He arrives to find a city fractured by tragedy, in a nation struggling to maintain a fragile peace. Oh, and he can now talk to ghosts (a skill whose origins are, frustratingly, never fully explained). He is subjected to torture, and a case of the plague, before being released to make his way home - haunted by nightmares and struggling to reconcile the horrors of his past with the new reality of his present.

Cas, an 18-year-old nobleman from the city of Palmerin, has just emerged from prison, captured at the tail end of a century-long war between his homeland and a neighboring kingdom.

Beasts of prey fairyloot