Madma and Tantli have grown up like sisters in the tentslum of the Ilas, where their people are starved and beaten. All their lives, they've powerlessly witnessed the regular abduction of hundred-day babies born with too much m j. Just before an Ilasi boy is killed by djanizaries for daring to venture beyond the tentslum walls, his final words lead Madma to the Gaol where the boy's stolen sister is locked away-a place from which Ilasi children never return.

Burning to act, Madma vows to free the imprisoned girl, setting off events that will ignite a revolution and convulse the Sforre-Yomnic matriarchy from its squalid dungeons to the labyrinthine paths of its scheming elite's hovering parliament. Delicately plotted, sumptuously set and vibrantly worded, MAEJ is a lavish standalone high-fantasy epic, perfect for fans of A Stranger in Olondria or The Spear Cuts Through Water.