Fledgling: The Keeper's Records of Revolution (Keeper's Records of Revolution, 1, Band 1) - Hardcover

Ali, S. K.

 
9780593531242: Fledgling: The Keeper's Records of Revolution (Keeper's Records of Revolution, 1, Band 1)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593531248 ISBN 13: 9780593531242
Verlag: Kokila, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

The first book in a gripping duology from acclaimed author S.K. Ali introduces a fractured world on the brink of either enlightenment or war.

Would you trade love for peace?

Raisa of Upper Earth has only lived a life of privilege and acquiescence. Ever dutiful, she accepts her father’s arrangement of her marriage to Lein, Crown Prince of the corrupt, volatile lands of Lower Earth. 

Though Lein is a stranger, Raisa knows the wedding will unite their vastly different worlds in a pact of peace: an infusion of Upper Earth technology will usher in the final age of enlightenment, ending war between humans forever. 

Or is justice more urgent?

Newly released from imprisonment, Nada of Lower Earth has found her own calling: disrupting the royal wedding. 

Convinced her cousin Lein’s alliance with Upper Earth will launch an invasive, terrifying form of tyranny, Nada sets out undercover to light the spark of revolution. 

When Raisa goes missing a week before the wedding, all eyes turn to the rebels, including Nayf, Nada’s twin brother, a fugitive on the run. 

In Nayf and Raisa meeting, the long-simmering animosity between their worlds slowly burns away into something unexpected.

But the Crown Prince wants his bride — and future — back. And he will go to the ends of the earths to reclaim them.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

S. K. Ali is the author of several books, including Saints and Misfits, a finalist for the American Library Association’s 2018 William C. Morris Award and winner of the APALA Honor Award and Middle East Book Honor Award; and Love from A to Z, a Today Show Read with Jenna Book Club selection. Both novels were named best YA novels of the year by various media sources including Entertainment Weekly and Kirkus. You can find Sajidah online at SKAliBooks.com and follow her on Instagram @SKAliBooks, on TikTok @SKAliBooks, and on Twitter @SajidahWrites.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

3rd Day 
of the Month
of Graze
Upper Earth
Gregorian Year 2153
Raisa of Upper Earth:
How We Met
For the future of our world, he has to fall in love with me. But at the party Papa orchestrated for this to occur, Lein has yet to glance my way.
Lein didn’t even look at me when we were first introduced, pride swelling Papa’s voice. “My daughter, Raisa. Raisa, may I present to you Crown Prince Lein, soon to be a guardian representing Lower Earth.”
With his hand firmly clasped in my father’s, Lein merely nodded at Papa’s announcement and then moved on—­to shake hands with the other men in the receiving line, to lift the hands of the other women to his bent forehead, ever a model of perfect Upper Earth customs despite his Lower Earth upbringing.
For the rest of the evening, my eyes trail him. I can’t help it. Papa prepped me for this introduction for months: I read the dossiers on Lein transferred by Alet, Papa’s assistant; I practiced the scripts Alet composed, full of warmth and wit, in attempts to win Lein over, in attempts to overcome my supposed aloofness when meeting new people. The latter task was hard work, to be truthful.
For ALIGN’s sake, I even deigned to dress in Lein’s favorite color.
But I’m left nursing an unsipped drink, wearing what Dame Kizuwanda assured me was a gorgeous dark emerald dress, standing at the outskirts of the party alongside whoever makes their way to me, my eyes darting to find Lein again and again as he flits about the hall, laughing with some, speaking low and serious, head bent, with others.
I locate him easily every time he pauses to scan the room before moving on with purposeful long strides to work another corner of the Visionaries Ballroom, built in the stuffy baroque style of centuries past.
Never, in any of those sweeping scans, does his gaze register my presence in the slightest.
“Raisa, you’re not listening.” Suzume tilts her head—­I can’t tell if it’s to check the left side of my forehead, to see whether my link is activated, or if it’s in judgment. “It’s a scalplink-­off event.”
“I’m not knitted.” I hide the unease in my voice—­access to the information a scalplink provideswould make this event easier to navigate. But our social events are increasingly scalplink-­free to encourage stronger connections between us. I don’t bother to tilt my own head to prove to Suzume that my link is idle.
She holds back a laugh. “I was hardly suggesting you were.”
“You were talking about pomegranates.”
“Did you notice the lack? No trace of pom in our drinks, no pom molasses dip for the amuse-­bouche. How can this be the status at the Autumn’s Eve Gala? All the guardians are here, and not just the Uppers.” She leans over to whisper, the long trails of tiny diamonds on her scalplink falling over one eye like shimmery bangs. “Even the new guardian of Lower Earth is here. If the council itself and their guests cannot be provided with offerings from the best of the harvest, what does that mean for the rest of us.” She ends in her typical way of speaking, a question uttered flatly, unquestioningly.
I nod, keeping my opinions to myself. Suzume is my closest companion—­I would never sayconfidante—­and she knows better than to ask such questions with any note of inquiry.
She knows that as I’m the chief guardian’s daughter, I likely know the reasons behind every decision made for this gathering and any others organized by the guardians. Perhaps she’s waiting for me to slip up and reveal a small kernel of truth. But I only reveal what my father tells me to, intentionally planted seeds of information—­or misinformation—­that strategically spread from Suzume through the upper echelons of our society.
I absolutely know that our carefully managed Upper Earth existence will only last, at most, twenty more years, that the future of the Bridge, the land mass on Lower Earth that we’re connected to, is projected to be even shorter—­perhaps a decade. That all the years of working to establish peace and safety on the remnants of our planet after the Great Catastrophe are being undone by the latest agitations by the brutes of Lower Earth, which have been growing in severity and violence in the last ten years.
Our food security is under the greatest threat at the moment as the brutes double their efforts to disrupt the flow of goods from Lower Earth farms to the Bridge processing plants and launch sites, gleefully seizing on this horrendous way to hurt us.
Crown Prince Lein’s father, Amir Gauis, not at the gala, governs Lower Earth but with increasing ineffectiveness. After a short period of iron-­fisted rule when the agricultural and mining operations were in full swing, he gradually lost hold of the small towns and villages of Lower Earth. Forget about the mission to track and control the brutes—­that fell to us in Upper Earth and the Bridge, to our commissaries, our experts, our spies.A drunkard and womanizer, the dossier on the palace revealed, Amir Gauis lives in a constant state of stupor, only revived by the periodic smuggling of new women into the palace or his excursions to visit the bride markets. His rulership, once seen as a hopeful replacement of the previous leader, is now a security threat to ALIGN. Resources and support must be shifted to his son, Lein, who by all accounts is more sophisticated in both lifestyle choices and world views.
The sophisticated Lein is now laughing at something Moineau just shared, her porcelain-­smooth face upturned to his own olive-­tinted one. He appears taken by her, which isn’t surprising.
She’s a tiny thing, aptly named “sparrow” in French, one of the three languages of Upper Earth. She tells everyone she meets everything in her brain, which is often filled with quite fanciful observations connecting the happenings around her with something she just read. She reads a lot. I wonder if her scalplink, dressed up tonight in stems of gold reaching to the center of her forehead, is idle now, or whether it’s offering facts to share with a rapt-­faced Lein.
I recall what I read this morning: Lein has great respect for the accruement of knowledge. He believes in access to information for all. He is committed to the importance of knitting the population of Lower Earth into the streams of civilizational scholarship ALIGN has preserved. He believes in the immediate implementation of the Enlightenment Project.
“He doesn’t appear to have Lower Earth ways, that’s certain.” Suzume is also observing Lein now, as he continues to bestow Moineau with amused attention. “I would have sworn he grew up here with us. His manners are beyond reproach.”
We watch Lein’s face—­dark eyes under dark groomed eyebrows, a straight nose, and a wide mouth that bursts into smiles just as easily as it closes into a thoughtful line, framed by an impeccable jawline and a high brow—­transform as he leans closer to Moineau. She puts a hand on his arm and says something into his ear earnestly, at which he draws away to indulge her with a beautiful smile. Even from across the room, I can read what his lips say in response: “I’ll keep your secret, not to worry.”
Moineau is also wearing green, but hers is a short, sleeveless, simple sheath that emphasizes her ingenuousness. It’s not like the long fulsome gown I’m wearing on my tall frame. The dossier suggested Lower Earth men prefer outward modesty.
Moineau...

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Verlag
Kokila
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593531248
ISBN 13 
9780593531242
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
544
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Purmerul LTD
https://strengholt.nl/en/

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