I got this softcover at this year's Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival in Haverhill, MA. It's a harrowing tale of a woman who's stuck in a terrifying place - in a world that's apparently falling apart. A small group of survivors live on a crumbling ship as huge monsters from above and below attack at random. And our protagonist Iraxi... she's the sole survivor of her people. She rejected a prince in favor of the man she loved, and in retaliation her family were killed - and she herself almost died with them, surviving but covered with burn scars. And on top of that she became the woman of the ship's leader, not the man she loved. (All this is presented in snips and flashbacks; the book is quite short, and the author manages to convey the weight of the world, its devastation, and the biases of the people with great economy.)

Most of the story involves Iraxi's pregnancy - extremely rare for women to bring a pregnancy to term under these conditions - with the jarring differences between her fury and grief and reluctance vs. the bizarre anticipation of everyone else. The details of the birth are presented very, very explicitly - and in a way that makes even an ordinary birth seem terrifying, never mind one that's clearly not ordinary at all...

We know early on that there's something very different about the baby, but it isn't until it's born that Iraxi herself begins to realize what's happened to her - and what choice she can now make. Up to this point she's been hoping for death, quite frankly, anything to get out of the life she's been stuck in - but her eerie newborn may have different plans...

I left this book in the Little Free Library; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

** Released for the 2023 April Showers/May Flowers challenge. **

Looking forward to reading this book.