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by Jenna Moran (Author), Lee Moyer (Illustrator)
Death's daughter steals a girl's self-hate to decorate her garden. An accidental bond of fate forms between them-across the vast uncharted wildlands between their worlds and a great gulf of time-and begins a friendship redefining both. A book for all who long to cast aside their weighty cloaks of human skin, unfurl the feathered wings beneath, and fall into the sky.
In Perdition, where Death's daughter's garden grows, your dreams are dead. Your heart is dead. Your wishes, too. That is simply in the nature of the place. Thus, when she encounters there a thing she actively desires not to look upon, it is precious; alluring. A matter of the highest interest-to desire anything at all. She resolves to catch it; to tame it; to make it a portion of herself and of her garden. Only, it is something spoken for: the anger, self-loathing, and despair of Valentina Grigorievna Sosunova, of the lands of life.
Valentina dreams the future and the past. One day, she will duel the lord of death. She will leave his lands in ruin, and a portion of her heart behind. Another day, she will return, to study at Death's Bleak Academy. Today ... she is alone, her family bound in enchanted sleep, her home ringed round by a witch's guard of a crows. In her dreams she's found the first hope of fighting back; has set her hand upon the true thing that is behind all things, that undergirds all things, the treasure that is the worth of all the world-but it is a treasure that belongs to Death, and Death is a jealous god.
One day, her great-great-granddaughter Aprosinya will grow up on stories of her deeds-stories of witches and curses, clockwork come to life, duels in the dark beyond the world, and the risen dead. They'll come to her as if they were finished things ... but they are not. The Bleak Academy has business with her family yet, and the things of fairy-tale too; and Valentina and the witch yet haunt her dreams.
Vita Nostra meets Spirited Away in this bold, heartening Slavic-inspired fantasy saga by Jenna Moran, where attention and care hold the world in place; where beauty, wonder, and terror may yet be found beyond the lands of life. Pick up a copy of the Night-Bird's Feather and let its story set you free.
with illustrations by Hugo-award winning artist Lee Moyer.
