Welcome to the Witherward, and to a London that is not quite like our own.
The grandchildren of the High Sorcerer are nothing but trouble. Cassia is determined to be inducted into the Society of Young Gifted Sorcerers. But the harder she trains, the more unreliable her spells become. But when Cassia accidentally awakens an archaic power, the fate of the entire city falls into her hands.
Ollivan, her disgraced older brother, is scheming to seize the leadership of the society and revoke his banishment. But if he is to succeed, he must unravel a vengeful plot he set in motion the night he was exiled. The problem? His sister has triggered the spell.
The city is divided between six rulers of six warring, magical factions. Each wields unique powers. Each is uniquely dangerous. The tenuous peace between them all is barely maintained by fragile accords. Now Cassia’s only chance to save that peace and put an end to the destruction she’s unleashed is to join forces with her villainous estranged brother.
Welcome to the Witherward, and to a London that is not quite like our own.
Here, it’s summertime in February, the Underground is a cavern of wonders and magic fills the streets. But this London is a city divided, split between six rival magical factions, each with their own extraordinary talents – and the alpha of the Changelings, Gedeon Ravenswood, has gone rogue, threatening the fragile accords that have held London together for decades.
Ilsa is a shapeshifting Changeling who has spent the first 17 years of her life marooned in the wrong London, where real magic is reviled as the devil’s work. Abandoned at birth, she has scratched out a living first as a pickpocket and then as a stage magician’s assistant, dazzling audiences by secretly using her Changeling talents to perform impossible illusions. When she’s dragged through a portal into the Witherward, Ilsa finally feels like she belongs.
But her new home is on the brink of civil war, and Ilsa is pulled into the fray. The only way to save London is to track down Gedeon, and he just so happens to be Ilsa’s long-lost brother, one of the last surviving members of the family who stranded her in the wrong world. Beset by enemies on all sides, surrounded by supposed Changeling allies wearing faces that may not be their own, Ilsa must use all the tricks up her sleeve simply to stay alive.
SIX OF CROWS meets THE PRESTIGE in a debut YA/crossover fantasy set in an alternate Victorian London, perfect for fans of V.E. Schwab.