When seventeen-year-old Valerie Russell runs away to New
York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly
betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with
a
gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine
subway system.
But there's something eerily beguiling
about Val's new friends. Impulsive Lolli talks of
monsters
in the subway tunnels they call home and shoots up a
shimmery amber-colored powder that makes the shadows
around her dance. Severe Luis claims he can make deals
with creatures that no one else can see. And then there's
Luis's brother, timid and sensitive Dave, who makes the
mistake of letting Val tag along as he makes a delivery
to
a woman who turns out to have goat hooves instead of
feet.
When a bewildered Val allows Lolli to talk her into
tracking down the hidden lair of the creature for whom
Luis and Dave have been dealing, Val finds herself bound
into service by a troll named Ravus. He is as hideous as
he is honorable. And as Val grows to know him, she finds
herself torn between her affection for an honorable
monster and her fear of what her new friends are
becoming.
Bestselling author Holly Black follows her
breakout debut, Tithe, with a rich, harrowing, and
compulsively readable parable of betrayal, abuse,
friendship, and love.
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