Cass Neary needs to get home, but a string of suspicious deaths has accumulated behind her, and she isn’t sure where is safe. She’s lost track of her lover, Quinn, and has only an oblique two-worded message to go on to find him. Listless, she runs into an old acquaintance, and ends up pulled into the sale of a priceless manuscript of the occult, reportedly thuosands of years old: The Book of Lamps and Banners. Soon she is again embroiled in a mysterious death, but this time it seems something supernatural may be at play. Hand’s writing remains as icily luminous as ever, and Cass is as dark and damaged under its gaze as in the previous novels. In many ways, the entire series is a meditation on trauma; here, again, is a reminder that healing is never finished, and memory is a tricky beast.