AMBERGATE

Scuff the kitchen drudge is forced on a journey that broadens and deepens the touchingly chilly, gothic world readers first saw in Murkmere (2006). Ominous and ever-present religion dictates fear and worship of birds, and the land is ruled by an evil Protectorate. Scuff, timid and sober, quails when soldiers show up seeking her at Murkmere. Unable to erase the scar on her arm marking her as Number 102 from the Capital’s orphanage, she assumes they’ve learned of her childhood crime and flees into the marshy Wasteland. Pursued à la Jean Valjean, she meets mysterious Erland, gets trapped in a house of ill repute and ends up back in the terrifying Capital. All the complications—Erland’s double identity, Scuff’s unknown parentage, unsavory royalty and rebels, and the reappearance of Leah, whom readers will remember as avia (part swan)—weave together in a beautiful climax that pains the heart and intrigues the mind. Mystical, stoic and poignant all at once. (Fantasy. YA)