Hearts That Cut

by Kika Hatzopoulou

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

The stakes, they are a-rising. The lore of the Wastelands continues to expand alongside the steady crescendo of Hearts That Cut, all the way to a satisfying conclusion that drives home the magic.

In this heart-pounding, much-anticipated sequel to Threads That Bind, Io will face threats even more dangerous and players even more powerful as she discovers what it will mean to follow—or defy—her fate.

It’s been five weeks since Io left Alante to follow the golden thread, and she’s no closer to finding the god on the other end. She spends her days in constant, grueling travel and her nights worrying over the fate-thread she shares with Edei—which seems to be fraying. Making matters worse, she and Bianca soon realize that their only lead has shaken them off, snapped the golden thread, and disappeared.

But not before Io gathers some crucial clues. Her investigation leads her to a new mystery, a rash of sibling disappearances across the Wastelands that seems to be connected to the murders in Alante. And all signs point to Nanzy, the golden city, as the center of the whole conspiracy.

As Io and Bianca make their way to Nanzy, they face powerful enemies, find allies new and old, and uncover a horrifying plot that traces back centuries. The more Io learns, the more she begins to suspect that the future of the world may truly rest on her shoulders. But she will have to determine how much of the future is her choice—and how much is simply her fate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593528747
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	06/18/2024
Series:	Threads That Bind , #2
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	46,815
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d)
Lexile:	870L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Kika Hatzopoulou is the bestselling author of Threads That Bind and its upcoming sequel, Hearts That Cut. She is a native Greek and current Londoner and holds an MFA in writing for children from the New School. In her free time, she enjoys urban quests and gastronomical adventures while narrating entire book and movie plots with her partner. Find Kika on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok @kikahatzopoulou and on her website kikahatzopoulou.com.

Read an Excerpt

The thread shimmered like liquid flames on Io’s palm, a razor of silver-­and-­gold twine. It was woven twice around each finger of her left hand, forming a misshapen mesh of fear and purpose. At night,before she dropped into whatever sad excuse for a bed she and Bianca had procured, Io would bind her left fist with cloth, then secure it in a sling across her chest.

It was a god’s thread, her only clue to the heart of the blasted conspiracy she had unearthed in Alante—she would rather cut off circulation to her hand than risk it slipping free.

She flexed her tired fingers, watching the raindrops scuttle over her knuckles. The thunderstorm had tailed them from Alante like a stray dog: five weeks of a relentless cycle of dust-­stained rain, thundering blizzards, and infuriating drizzle. Bianca had pinched two leopard-print waterproof boater hats from canal drivers back in Poleon, but despite that, they were constantly drenched to the bone, so much so that Io’s leather jacket currently smelled like a dead rat dipped in moldy cheese. Five weeks of sloshing through rain and mud from one Wastelands town to another, of haggling for food and shelter, of bickering with the mob queen, of jerking awake, drenched in cold sweat, fumbling to check the knotted thread on her left hand.

Five whole weeks, and the thread had led them to this: the shack across the street and the figure inside it.

“It’s been six hours,” Bianca Rossi said. The mob queen was crouching on the slanted tin roof next to Io, eyes hooded beneath her wide-­brimmed leopard-­print hat and locked on the block of shanty houses. “I think we’ve waited long enough, cutter.”

Io was still cutter to Bianca: sharp, lethal, a threat. It didn’t matter that Io had broken her out of police headquarters, plotted the betrayal and punishment of Io’s sister with her, forsaken everything she knew so they could track down whoever had masterminded the mob queen’s fall. It didn’t matter that they had prowled through the Wastelands together, huddled close for warmth, fought back to back, cooked and ate over the same fire. In Bianca’s eyes, Io was and would always be a moira-­born, the youngest of three sisters descended from the goddesses of Fate, able to see and cut the threads of life and love. Io would always be the girl who handed her over to the wolves who severed her life-­thread and transformed her into an unwilling fury-­born.

A lifeless wraith and a heartless cutter, what a pair they made.

“Six hours,” Bianca repeated, “and your stakeout has yielded nothing. Let’s just smash through the door and punch them until they spill all their secrets.”

While that did sound alluring, it would also be disastrous. For five weeks, the god had been giving them the slip, always two steps ahead. If they rushed into action now, they might not get another chance like this.

“The point of a stakeout,” Io replied sharply, pushing her long-­distance spectacles up her nose, “is towatch. We can’t act until we know who or what they really are.”

“They’re asleep, that’s what they are.” Bianca flicked a wrist at the shack across the rooftops, where the figure had indeed been stationed for the entirety of these six hours.

Through the shack’s windows, outlines were cast in bronze firelight. Several bodies were nestled on bedrolls and in hammocks hanging from the ceiling, all of them refugees seeking shelter from the Great Tide that had slowly been scaling up the coast of the Southern Peninsula. Most were asleep, but one of them paced the tiny space from the stove to the window. He was an older, bald man who had arrived from the Southern Peninsula earlier that afternoon, in the same refugee group as the owner of the gold thread. His face had been tearstained and solemn; Io suspected that he might have been separated from family or friends on the journey here. Now he stuck his crooked nose against the rain-­spattered glass of the window—for a moment, Io and Bianca tensed.

But the man couldn’t see them. To him, Io and Bianca were just two of the hundred shadows clinging to the roofs. Such was the perk of a water town like Hagia that balanced on thousands of thin stilts, tin shanties stacked on top of each other like a child’s toys, tidewater claiming the ground below at night; its access to electricity was very limited. No streetlights speckled the horizon—the dark was broken only by a few carefully tended fires, willowy smoke rising to meet the leaden thunderclouds above. Bianca, born and raised under the barrage of neon lights that was Lilac Row, hated the lack ofelectricity, but Io found it oddly charming. Firelight tinted everything in a rosy orange, like lips freshly kissed.

The man dropped the curtain back into place and lay on his bedroll. Minutes passed. He didn’t stir again.

Bianca cocked her head in that feline way of hers. “Is he asleep?”

Io called forth the Quilt, a tapestry of the silver threads woven between people and the things they loved. It was invisible to all but the descendants of the Moirae, the goddesses of Fate. The moira-­born always manifested in three siblings: one to weave the threads of fate, one to elongate and measure them, and one to cut them. Io was the third, a cutter. In the Quilt, she could see past wood andconcrete, right to the bundle of silver threads that burst out of a person’s chest. The old man’s threads were completely motionless, and so were the threads of every refugee in the tiny shack.

“Yes,” Io said. “They all look asleep.”

“Finally,” Bianca drawled. “Now can we kick down the door and demand answers?”

Editorial Reviews

06/01/2024

Gr 9 Up—This climate-ravaged fantasy follows the electric ending of Threads That Bind. Io and the mob queen–turned-wraith Bianca are reluctant allies as they cross the Wastelands following a golden thread that Io is clinging to by her fingertips: the life thread of a god. Io doesn't know why the gods are trying to bring back the extinct line of Furies or why so many other-born are being assassinated, but the answers lie in the sprawling city of Nanzy. Her only clue is a prophecy from the descendants of the Muses: "She cuts the thread and the world ends." When Io cuts someone's thread, she must slice her own, severing the things she loves. Nanzy holds new allies and betrayals in unexpected corners, with subtle foreshadowing to reward careful readers. Io is an intricately developed character who is unafraid of decisive action but ever conscious of the consequences. Hatzopoulou assigns interesting flaws to her cast—loyalty, hubris, and curiosity, adding dimension to the twists and turns of Io's mystery. The epic dystopian worldbuilding raises interesting stakes, and Io's romance with Edei will tug at readers' heartstrings. The real backbone of the story is the trauma, secrets, expectations, and betrayals Io and her sisters have inflicted on one another. The cast is diverse in race, sexuality, and gender. VERDICT Epic and insightful, this adventure makes for a fun and heartrending page-turner. Highly recommended, and a solid choice for fans of Rebecca Ross's Divine Rivals.—Emmy Neal

School Library Journal

2024-03-23
Abandoned by her sisters, Io Ora must trust Bianca—former mob queen, now dying wraith—to help her find the hidden gods and end them forever in this duology closer that follows Threads That Bind (2023).

Io and Bianca cross mudflats that harbor deadly chimerini and dodge the violent, unpredictable tides that flood the Wastelands, where humans have struggled to survive ever since the Collapse shattered the moon into three pieces. The youngest of the Moirae-born (sisters with Fates-like powers), Io is able to see the threads governing every human fate in the Quilt. She can end a life simply by cutting another’s life-thread, but the cost is high: Each time, she must sever one of her own 35 threads. As Bianca traverses anarchic wastes and dangerous urban slums ruled by powerful gangs on the way to their destination, the teeming city-nation of Nanzy, she weakens but pushes on. Despite setbacks and betrayals, the two discover unexpected allies willing to risk their lives to confront the gods. Io’s personal evolution, like the Moirae’s silver threads, is woven seamlessly into the complicated plot. While her romance with Edei is satisfying, the story’s emotional driver is the sisters’ difficult history of loss, longing, pain, and betrayal; each bears scars from their old, set-in-stone rivalries. Io’s world has an epic thematic scope and an intricately imagined setting. The characters are diverse in appearance, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

Enticing and original. (Fantasy. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews

“An epic thematic scope and an intricately imagined setting...Enticing and original.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Epic and insightful, this adventure makes for a fun and heartrending page-turner. Highly recommended, and a solid choice for fans of Rebecca Ross’s Divine Rivals.” —SLJ

“Hearts That Cut is everything I want in a sequel! In this spellbinding return to the climate-ravaged world of the other-born, Kika Hatzopoulou delivers a high-stakes, page-turning mystery with an utterly gasp-worthy twist.” —Leslie Vedder, bestselling author of the Bone Spindle trilogy

“Hearts That Cut is a captivating, confident return to the fantastical—and utterly original—world established in Threads That Bind. Every word is essential, every sentence sings; I would read Kika's shopping lists at this point, but I'm so so glad I got this instead. A must-read for all Greek mythology and fantasy fans.” —Sarah Underwood, New York Times bestselling author

From the Publisher