The author of the visionary New York Times bestseller Dread Nation returns with another spellbinding historical fantasy set at the crossroads of race and power in America.It is 1937, and Laura Ann Langston lives in an America dividedbetween those who work the mystical arts and those who do not. Ever since the Great Rust, a catastrophic event that blighted the arcane force called the Dynamism and threw America into disarray, the country has been rebuilding for a better future. And everyone knows the future is industry and technologyotherwise known as Mechomancynot the traditional mystical arts.Laura disagrees. A talented young queer mage from Pennsylvania, Laura hopped a portal to New York City on her seventeenth birthday with hopes of earning her mages license and becoming something more than a rootworker.But four months later, shes got little to show for it other than an empty pocket and broken dreams. With nowhere else to turn, Laura applies for a job with the Bureau of the Arcanes Conservation Corps, a branch of the US government dedicated to repairing the Dynamism so that Mechomancy can thrive. There she meets the Skylark, a powerful mage with a mysterious past, who reluctantly takes Laura on as an apprentice.As theyre sent off on their first mission together into the heart of the countrys oldest and most mysterious Blight, they discover the work of mages not encountered since the darkest period in Americas past, when Black mages were killed for their powerwork that could threaten Lauras and the Skylarks lives, and everything theyve worked for.
