"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 Now the war is over, and kindlings have been cast adrift—their magic outlawed, their skills outdated, their formidable balar weapons prized only as relics and souvenirs.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...

"Chicago, 1944: twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, the California concentration camp where they have been "interned" by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled in Chicago, where Aki's older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier as a forerunner of the...