Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0441006507, Hardcover)

From the author of the New York Times Notable Book Looking for the Mahdi and Faraday's Orphans--a novel of secrets, slavery, and the sovereignty of the human soul.

Born of the royal leaders of Adalon and the White Sea Islands, Antonya Terhune was orphaned as a babe when her wicked uncle usurped her father's rule and invaded her mother's realm. She was raised by the Brothers of Blessed Reason, her existence a secret kept from her family's enemies. She learned skills most women of the land were never taught--reading, writing, and mathematics--but she yearned to be a warrior.

Then when she left the monastery, she ventured out into the world under her uncle's dictatorship--adopting and shedding disguises like snakeskin--and witnessed firsthand how the common people slaved for church and state.

Now Antonya has come of age, and she's ready to reclaim her lands. And with the aid of the lone defender Kerric of Myro, she will lead a small fighting force in an attempt to topple a tyrant...and set the people of two lands free.

* Wood's work has been praised as "impressive" (New York Times Book Review) and "endlessly imaginative" (Booklist), and has been compared to William Gibson's in the New York Review of Science Fiction