Showing results by narrator "Anne-Marie Gaillard" in All Categories

Raised by her mother and Maeve on Slanbeg, an island off the west coast of Ireland, Orpen has a childhood of love, rockpools and stories by the fireside. But the stories grow darker, and the training begins. Ireland has been devoured by a ravening menace known as the skrake, and though Slanbeg is safe for now, the women must always be ready to run, or to fight.

Orpen has always been an outlier in Phoenix City - the only outsider ever admitted to the ranks of the banshees, the female warriors who enforce order, and protect it from the skrake - the ravening creatures that have laid waste to the rest of the country, and gather at the city walls. Unrest is building in the city - a deadly sickness is spreading through the workers, while an unspoken disillusionment is creeping amongst the fighting women, weary of enforcing the all-male management's patriarchal rule, and of the cost, to their sisters, and to young new recruits, of upholding this order.