Claire Winn
Claire Winn spends her days as a legal writer, her evenings as a sci-fi and fantasy author, and her weekends LARPing as a pyromaniac mage, junkyard druid, or celestial assassin. She grew up playing piano and performing musical theater, and went on to study history and political science at Northwestern University. More recently, she married into an equally nerdy gamer family and now lives among the forested backroads of Michigan. She is the author of the Requiem Dark cyberpunk series for young adults, and Shadecaller is her first fantasy novel. You can follow her misadventures at @clairewinnauthor on Instagram or on her website, clairewinn.com.
Shadecaller
A thief runs afoul of her city’s bloodthirsty nobility when she accidentally binds her life to the charismatic half-monster bodyguard of a royal house—in the first of a romantic dystopian fantasy duology rife with fallen gods, monsters, and the deadly songs that compel them.
Ever since her firebrand mother died in a failed rebellion, street-thief Blink has sought answers about her strange ability: a siren voice that can command monsters. It’s an anomaly, a power unique to the god-bone instruments wielded by the city’s ruling Maestros. Music is forbidden to the lower reaches of society—so when Blink’s only friend is caught helping her steal from the musical archives, he’s sentenced to death by the city’s most infamously bloodthirsty Maestro, Nadareina.
Sef has been Nadareina’s bodyguard—more her pet—ever since she spared him from the massacre of his noble family and anchored a monster beneath his skin. Now unbreakably bound to her, he resists the monster’s slow, inevitable takeover. But when Nadareina demands he join her onstage in slaughtering prisoners, an agonizing parallel to his family’s demise, Sef decides to send her performance up in flames.
When Sef’s sabotage interrupts Blink’s attempted rescue, Blink accidentally calls a song that transfers Sef’s bond from Nadareina to herself. Now, with her friend still captive and nightmarish monsters hunting them, Blink and Sef are forced into a tenuous alliance. But Blink’s plan to outplay Nadareina from the shadows is hindered by Sef’s drive for vengeance—and the ruinous attraction growing between them. And as the dangers they face accelerate Sef’s monstrous transformation, Blink must ally with the doomed rebellion her mother started—or join her in the ashes.
Publication
NA (World English): Penguin Random House (Random House Canada)
Release date: 22 June 2027
