THE HERD

A pair of peasant siblings take on their city’s vampiric hierarchy in Bell’s dystopian YA fantasy novel, the first in a series.

All members of the Herd—the human servants of the aristocratic Blessed—must undergo the Branding ceremony at the age of 16. Susan is no exception; during the ritual, she will swear her loyalty to the godlike Akharu, the monarchs who rule the city of Larkspur from their hilltop palace. If the Lords find her worthy, she will receive her brand and move on to marriage, motherhood, and an adult life of servitude. If she is found unworthy—like her brother Trevor was three years earlier—she will be taken and never seen again. Susan’s other brother, the blacksmith Ryan, is still a year away from the Branding, but his hatred of the Akharu for taking Trevor is so great he would prefer vengeance to servitude. When a friend asks Ryan to hide a dagger for him—one made of a brilliant metal Ryan has never seen before—he begins a journey into the secret underworld of the Closure (the home of the Herd), where he may finally get answers about how to bring down the Akharu. Meanwhile, Susan is deemed Unworthy and spirited off to the Akharu palace to serve as the plaything of tyrannical Princess Sifa. Susan must find a way to escape…or be turned into something as monstrous as her captors. Bell’s grisly prose captures Larkspur’s many varieties of violence, like the Trench, where humans captured from beyond the city battle animals gladiator-style: “The smooth stone walls were splashed in shades of red, brown, and black. Blood…Ryan’s eyes followed the stained walls down to the bottom. Huddled together at the base of the Trench were about a dozen Beasts…lean and filthy, with ragged animal skins hanging loosely from their thin frames.” Though Bell plays with established vampire lore, he does so in an inventive way that keeps the novel from ever feeling derivative. Readers will look forward to seeing how he expands this harsh world in future volumes.

A gripping dark fantasy set in a bloodthirsty civilization.