Birdsong (novel)

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Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Feminist Dystopia

In Fyrthsrand, women are thrown from clay and men are forged from iron. Shay, son of one of the town’s Holy Fathers, hasn’t a speck of metal in his body. An accident as an infant has left his arms scarred and weakened, but his difference from other men runs deeper than his skin. It seems impossible to keep up with his peers, who are already marrying and beginning careers of service in the town’s defense, until Shay discovers a relic of the church’s ancient enemy. With it, he swears to become the kind of man his father could be proud of.

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Nessa was born in the ever-lengthening shadow of an assault on Fyrthsrand. Monstrous, disease-spreading hounds stalk the nearby woods, growing ever closer. Now an adult, Nessa swears revenge on the beasts that took both her parents. Despite her mettle, she is still a woman, so the church forbids her from joining the town defense. All the while, the looming threats of marriage and motherhood, the destiny of all Fyrthsrand’s women, threaten to strip the life she aches for if she doesn’t forge her own path.

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The defense against the hounds worsens, and the Heargarde is running out of weapons to fight them with. When an opportunity arises to scavenge the town’s woods for abandoned supplies, Shay and Nessa both seize the position of not-quite-soldier. Of course, the dreadful hound is not the only monster the forest contains, and as Shay and Nessa delve deeper, the cracks in their identities threaten to swallow them whole.