Liar's Moon: Thief Errant, #2, by Elizabeth C. Bunce

Liar's Moon: Thief Errant, #2, by Elizabeth C. Bunce

Okay, first of all, I just looked, and you can pre-order Liar's Moon at Amazon for $11 right now. ELEVEN DOLLARS. That's ridiculously cheap. So if you were a fan of StarCrossed and you haven't already pre-ordered Liar's Moon, you should probably go and do that right now. Because who knows when the price will change, right?

If you haven't read StarCrossed yet, you have plenty of time to get caught up before Liar's Moon comes out: it only pubs in November. So head over to your library—or, as I said at Kirkus earlier this week, if you're a fan of McKinley and Pierce and Cashore and Turner and Kushner, it'd be a safe one to just go ahead and purchase—and pick it up.

No, I'm not secretly working for Scholastic or anything. I just really, really love these books. And I want to walk the walk, as it were, after writing about how we should be evangelizing about our favorite Deserve To Be Better Known books before they actually need the help.

Anyway. For those of you who've read StarCrossed...

The last time Digger saw Durrel Decath, he was headed off to his arranged marriage. That was about a year ago.

So you can imagine her surprise when she's picked up off of the street (that part isn't the surprise, as it comes with the territory when you're a thief) and chucked into a jail cell (also not the surprise) with DURREL DECATH (surprise!) who's there because he supposedly killed his wife (MEGA EPIC SURPRISE, because, people, this is DURREL DECATH. He doesn't go around killing people. He just... goes around being awesome. And, you know: Dreamy.).

Anyway, Digger gets out of prison, and the sleuthing begins! Unfortunately, the more she finds out about Durrel's situation, the worse it—and he—starts to look...

Meanwhile, Prince Wierolf and the Sarists are (hopefully) getting ever closer to winning the civil war, Digger's illustrious zealot of a brother is showing more of an interest in her (which she in no way welcomes), and her investigation is starting to result in information about some ugly, ugly doings by some powerful, powerful people.

Like I said over at Kirkus, Bunce totally switches things up in Liar's Moon: It reads more like a noir fantasy than anything else, which isn't at all how I'd have described StarCrossed. The change took me by surprise, but in a good way.

ALSO, HOLY CRAP, WAIT UNTIL YOU READ THE SHOCKING TWIST.

YOU. WILL. FAINT.

And then you'll have to join me in that corner over there, where I'll be standing around, panting for Book Three.