Kindling
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From bestselling and award-winning author Traci Chee comes a stand-alone fantasy set against a war-ravaged world where kindling warfare—the use of elite, magic-wielding teenage soldiers—has been outlawed. In this rich and evocative novel, seven kindlings search for purpose and identity as they prepare for one final battle. For fans of the classic films Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven.
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Once, the war was fought with kindlings—elite, magic-wielding warriors whose devastating power comes at the cost of their own young lives.
Now the war is over, and kindlings have been cast adrift—their magic outlawed, their skills outdated, their formidable balar weapons prized only as relics and souvenirs.
Violence still plagues the countryside, and memories haunt those who remain. When a village comes under threat of siege, it offers an opportunity for seven kindlings to fight one last time. But war changed these warriors. And to reclaim who they once were, they will have to battle their pasts, their trauma, and their grim fates to come together again—or none of them will make it out alive.
From bestselling and award-winning author Traci Chee comes a gut-wrenching, introspective fantasy about seven lost soldiers searching for the peace they once fought for and the future in which they’re finally daring to believe.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Employing simple yet brutal worldbuilding rendered in raw prose, Chee (A Thousand Steps into Night) offers an unflinching look into the horrors of war in this Seven Samurai–inspired tale. To help protect her community from raiders, a youth from the small farming village of Camas sets out in search of kindlings, magical soldiers who were conscripted as children into a centuries-long war between opposing nations. After the conflict, during which they burned out their powers and themselves, the kindlings inhabit a country plagued by violence that has outlawed the very magic it once used for its own purposes. Living as houseless, orphaned drifters—whose kin were either purged from record or paid off—some kindlings use their diminished but no less powerful skills for professions considered more unsavory. As the farm girl embarks on her quest, she sets off a chain of events that will bring together seven kindlings for one last battle. Chee expertly conveys the characters' personalities, cultures, beliefs, and backgrounds via a second-person narrative that decisively differentiates the large cast's voices. Teeming with frank examinations of war, violence, PTSD, imperialism, colonialism, and all they entail, this somber fantasy will challenge readers mentally and emotionally. Ages 14–up.
