Master of Poisons
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
“This is a prayer hymn, a battle cry, a love song, a legendary call and response bonfire talisman tale. This is medicine for a broken world." —Daniel José Older
Named a Best of 2020 Pick for Kirkus Review's Best Books of 2020
Award-winning author Andrea Hairston weaves together African folktales and postcolonial literature into unforgettable fantasy in Master of Poisons
The world is changing. Poison desert eats good farmland. Once-sweet water turns foul. The wind blows sand and sadness across the Empire. To get caught in a storm is death. To live and do nothing is death. There is magic in the world, but good conjure is hard to find.
Djola, righthand man and spymaster of the lord of the Arkhysian Empire, is desperately trying to save his adopted homeland, even in exile.
Awa, a young woman training to be a powerful griot, tests the limits of her knowledge and comes into her own in a world of sorcery, floating cities, kindly beasts, and uncertain men.
Awash in the rhythms of folklore and storytelling and rich with Hairston's characteristic lush prose, Master of Poisons is epic fantasy that will bleed your mind with its turns of phrase and leave you aching for the world it burns into being.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hairston (Will Do Magic for Small Change) dazzles with this complex epic fantasy about a people struggling to survive in the world they've helped destroy. A poison desert is spreading across the Arkhysian Empire, killing everything in its path. Djola, Emperor Azizi's second in command, has tried to warn the population for years, urging them to save their homeland but to no avail. Now that it's too late for any minor precaution to help, he sets out to find a solution. As Djola works to stop the world from burning, he discovers the darkness lurking within the empire and in his own heart. Meanwhile, garden sprite Awa, a young griot in training, struggles to find her own place in the uncertain future. In stirring prose ("As long as sweet water fell from the sky every afternoon and mist rolled in on a night wind, everybody promised to change tomorrow or next week. Then crops failed and rivers turned to dust."), Hairston weaves a rich tapestry of folklore and adventure, inviting readers into a well-developed, non-Western fantasy world, while navigating pressing issues of climate change and personal responsibility. This is an urgent, gorgeous work.
