A resourceful young heroine must protect the world from her enemies—and her own power—in this thrilling sequel to the acclaimed Breath of Earth, an imaginative blend of alternative history, fantasy, science, magic, and adventure.
When an earthquake devastates San Francisco in an alternate 1906, the influx of geomantic energy nearly consumes Ingrid Carmichael. Bruised but alive, the young geomancer flees the city with her friends, Cy, Lee, and Fenris. She is desperate to escape Ambassador Blum, the cunning and dangerous bureaucrat who wants to use Ingrid’s formidable powers to help the Unified Pacific—the confederation of the United States and Japan—achieve world domination. To stop them, Ingrid must learn more about the god-like magic she inherited from her estranged father—the man who set off the quake that obliterated San Francisco.
When Lee and Fenris are kidnapped in Portland, Ingrid and Cy are forced to ally themselves with another ambassador from the Unified Pacific: the powerful and mysterious Theodore Roosevelt. But even TR’s influence may not be enough to save them when they reach Seattle, where the magnificent peak of Mount Rainier looms. Discovering more about herself and her abilities, Ingrid is all too aware that she may prove to be the fuse to light the long-dormant volcano . . . and a war that will sweep the world.
Nebula Award–nominated author Beth Cato hails from Hanford, California, but currently writes and bakes cookies in a lair west of Phoenix, Arizona. She’s the author of the Clockwork Dagger duology and the Blood of Earth trilogy, plus scores of other short stories and poems across a multitude of publications. She shares her household with a hockey-loving husband, a numbers-obsessed son, and three feline overlords.
We first met Ingrid Carmichael in the weeks leading up to the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which leveled 80 percent of the city and still ranks as the largest loss of life from a natural disaster in California’s history. But while the earthquake may the same, the California it takes place in is profoundly […]
For nearly two decades, Jim Killen has served as the science fiction and fantasy book buyer for Barnes & Noble. Every month on Tor.com and the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Jim shares his curated list of the month’s can’t-miss new SFF releases.
Beth Cato’s Call of Fire picks up in the wake of the cataclysmic ending of Breath of Earth, and in the aftermath of the famous San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Our protagonist Ingrid Carmichael, her paramour Cy, his inventor friend Fenris, and the Chinese emperor-in-exile Lee (who was raised with Ingrid as a sibling) escape a […]
