"This is a prayer hymn, a battle cry, a love song, a legendary call and
response bonfire talisman tale. This is medicine for a broken world.
--Daniel José Older
Named a Best of 2020 Pick for Kirkus Review's Best Books of 2020
**
Award-winning author Andrea Hairston weaves together African folktales
and postcolonial literature into unforgettable fantasy in Master of
Poisons**
The world is changing. Poison desert eats good farmland. Once-sweet
water turns foul. The wind blows sand and sadness across the Empire. To
get caught in a storm is death. To live and do nothing is death. There
is magic in the world, but good conjure is hard to find.
Djola, righthand man and spymaster of the lord of the Arkhysian Empire,
is desperately trying to save his adopted homeland, even in exile.
Awa, a young woman training to be a powerful griot, tests the limits of
her knowledge and comes into her own in a world of sorcery, floating
cities, kindly beasts, and uncertain men.
Awash in the rhythms of folklore and storytelling and rich with
Hairston's characteristic lush prose, Master of Poisons is epic
fantasy that will bleed your mind with its turns of phrase and leave you
aching for the world it burns into being.
