Xhea has no magic. Born without the power that everyone else takes for
granted, Xhea is an outcast - no way to earn a living, buy food, or change the life that fate has dealt her. Yet she has a unique talent: the
ability to see ghosts and the tethers that bind them to the living
world, which she uses to scratch out a bare existence in the ruins
beneath the City's floating Towers.
When a rich City man comes
to her with a young woman's ghost tethered to his chest, Xhea has no
idea that this ghost will change everything. The ghost, Shai, is a
Radiant, a rare person who generates so much power that the Towers use
it to fuel their magic, heedless of the pain such use causes. Shai's
home Tower is desperate to get the ghost back and force her into a
body - any body - so that it can regain its position, while the Tower's
rivals seek the ghost to use her magic for their own ends. Caught
between a multitude of enemies and desperate to save Shai, Xhea thinks
herself powerless - until a strange magic wakes within her. Magic dark and slow, like rising smoke, like seeping oil. A magic whose very touch
brings death.
With two extremely strong female protagonists, Radiant is a story of fighting for what you believe in and finding strength that you never thought you had.