In the wake of the King\"s death, war has come to Vordan. The Deputies-General has precarious control of the city, but it is led by a zealot who sees traitors in every shadow. Executions have become a grim public spectacle....

Alice has her first adventure outside Geryon\"s library after he volunteers her to work with five other apprentice Readers, including Isaac, to capture a rogue apprentice who murdered his master. But none of them realize that the library of the late rival Reader is still a working deadly labyrinth or that the vicious guardian is still protecting it....

When Alice\"s father disappears in a shipwreck, she is sent to live with an uncle she\"s never heard of who happens to have an impossibly massive, off-limits library. But then a talking cat sneaks her inside the forbidden aisles, and she\"s dared to open one of its unusual books....