The second book in Rosemary Kirstein’s extraordinary Steerswoman Series follows Rowan and her companion, Bel, as they venture into the outskirts: a dangerous, inhospitable land marked by few sources of food and panoply of monsters intent on killing the humans who dare to live there. Their search for the strange gems will take them to the very limits of the outskirts, and far beyond their own understanding of how the world they live in is changing—and perhaps, has already irreparably changed. Here, even more than in the first book, it becomes clear that Kirstein is toying with the notion that technology and magic are cousins, and that both are a means to power. But while the wizards seem, more than ever, unstoppable, they remain so distant from life as to be ignorant of the ways that love of a people and a place—even a place as dangerous as the outskirts—can subvert the most powerful of evils.