Lee follows up her phenomenal Green Bone Saga trilogy with this fantastic stand-alone epic fantasy novella that feels like a classic folktale.... Untethered Sky is an evocative, emotional novella you’ll want to finish in a single sitting because it’s just that good"— BuzzFeed The novella is essentially about how you need a monster to catch a monster, whilst carrying the hefty weight of reality by reminding us that monsters cannot be tamed. The story follows Ester, a ruhker (aka trainer/handler) of a roc named Zahra, who is basically a giant bird that is the size of a full grown man. We're taken along Ester's journey as she trains and forms a relationship with Zahra in which they hunt and slay manticores. In this world, manticores are THE WORST.

If you like reading about falconry, and animal training hunting scenes, this book will be a treat for you because that is basically what this is about. Me, I was bored and bored. The hunt scenes are breathtaking. Using a combination of chariots, horses, and lures, Lee writes beautiful and lifelike scenes of launching rocs above the spacious grasslands around the kingdom. It’s easy to become attached to the majestic Zahra, Ester’s roc. And when Ester begins a bond with a fellow ruhker named Darius, the shared love of their chosen paths is endearing. While I liked Untethered Sky (can Fonda Lee even write anything bad?), I felt it could be so much more. Certainly, if you were expecting something along the lines of The Green Bone saga, you will be somewhat disappointed.If you like extremely tense political maneuvering and intrigue, you will love Jade City. Fonda Lee is the new Mario Puzo; Jade City has officially dethroned The Godfather."—Sarah Gailey Fonda Lee wonderfully and brutally reimagines the mythic monster hunter with one of the most iconic and compelling literary duos I've ever read." - Matt Wallace, Hugo Award winner and author of the Savage Rebellion Trilogy Zahra was her name. When the crate opened, all I saw at first were her eyes, the largest of any living creature, enormous golden orbs fixing me with a raptor’s murderous glare. She was a year-old fledgling taken from the nest, already lethal and immense. I was a woman of eighteen, small, wounded, overanxious. Sweat coated my hands and lathered my body beneath heavy leather work gloves and a tarnished scale vest. Ruhkers have been killed on the first day. If it happened to me, another apprentice would take my place. We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee, an epic fantasy fable about the pursuit of obsession at all costs—available April 11 from Tordotcom Publishing.

as long as your heart beats, you’ll be a ruhker. i know this as much as god knows every creature, because i once thought there was no reason for me to be alive, no logic to survival, no meaning to be found past endurance of loss, yet there was. ”zahra and i were complete; we were the sun and the wind, the sky and the earth, life and death, above the world and untouchable. ” The main character, Ester, is interesting, and I was nicely surprised when this didn't immediately become a simple revenge-trope tale. Lee’s Green Bone Saga is The Godfather with an Asian cast, Game of Thrones in a suit, tie and sunglasses. It has all the earmarks of a modern, international gangster epic juiced with boardroom intrigue, economic theory and swordfights.”—NPR on Jade Legacy Lee’s series will stand as a pillar of epic fantasy and family drama.”— Library Journal, starred review, on Jade Legacy Therefore, when Ester's last sentence states, "Where, come spring, there would be new monsters to tame"... it was a depressing reminder of the futilities we go through as humans to feel safe in a monster-tamed world, when the reality is that monsters can't never be tamed.