The Memory Hunters

Summary

HISTORY REMEMBERS … BUT BLOOD NEVER FORGETS.

Kiana Strade can dive deeper into blood memories than anyone alive. But instead of devoting her talents to the temple she’s meant to lead, Key is determined to use her skill as a researcher for the Museum of Human Memory … and to avoid the public eye in opulent, cutthroat Asheburg.

Valerian IV’s twin swords protect Key from murderous rivals and her own enthusiasm alike. Vale cares about Key as a friend—and maybe more—but most of all, she needs to keep her job so she can support her parents and siblings in the storm-torn south.

But when Key collects a memory about the founding of the temple that diverges from official history, no one but Vale sees the fallout. Key’s mentor suspiciously dismisses the finding. Her powerful mother demands she stop research altogether. And Key, unusually affected by the memory, begins to lose moments, then minutes, then days.

As Vale becomes increasingly entangled in Key’s obsessive drive for answers, the two women uncover a shattering discovery—and a devastating betrayal. Key and Vale can remain complicit, or they can jeopardize everything to bring the truth to light. Either way, Key is becoming consumed by the past in more ways than one, and time is running out.

“One of the stars is the setting itself; a future with discernable roots in our present, traceable through the threads of culture, geography, music, and language that bind humanity as inextricably as the strands of mycelium make a forest into a family.”—Jacqueline Carey, New York Times bestselling author of Kushiel’s Dart