There she is under the command of Altan Trengsin, a former star pupil at Sinegard and the last of an extinct race called the Speerly.

Jiang disappears and Rin is shipped off the Cike division in order to protect her from the infighting of the Twelve Warlords. Sinegard almost falls, if not for Jiang and Rin exposing their shamanistic powers. The Federation marches on Sinegard and the students are all drafted into the war. Rin continues her studies under Jiang until the Federation of Mugen, an island off the coast of Nikan, declares war on Nikan.

But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity. Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second.

Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive-and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.įor while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power-an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. That she got into Sinegard-the most elite military school in Nikan-was even more surprising.īecause being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. When Rin aced the Keju-the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies-it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. A brilliantly imaginative talent makes her exciting debut with this epic historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic, in the tradition of Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings and N.K.

Amin maalouf origins