Kree has been raised as a fearless fighter in a ravaged world: postapocalyptic, posthuman, the population decimated by wars and civilization long since collapsed. After her attempt to avenge the death of her dog, Loka, goes horribly wrong, Kree finds herself lost in a world after death and wanders into the city of the terrible mendicants.

Under the Brothers' totalitarian rule, Kree can lead a quiet life and forget her violent past, even if needles grow in her skull and hallucinatory blood rains occasionally pour down to remind her. She can make friends: a healer with a shaking tent, a mysterious stranger hatched from an egg, and a gruff electrician in a world without electricity. And she can have her Loka as long as she toes the Party line and does as she's told. When she can't--when her friends start to disappear and the Brothers turn against her--Kree sets out on a quest, searching for a new way forward.

Multiply reincarnated and unstuck in time, Kree is the characteristically marvelous creation of Manuela Draeger, whose extraordinary stories, in the words of author China Miéville, "are as close to dreams as fiction can be."