The Card-Cutter of Ambry

About this book

In the Lantern Reach, nine worlds circle a dying sun, and every eleven-year-old receives a punched card from the great brass Loom that decides their whole life. Everyone believes the Loom reads the stars. Halloran Fisk knows better: for ninety years the cards have been cut by hand, and for twenty-five of them the hand has been his. Now the frightened empire has its Chosen One, the Lamplighter, a thirteen-year-old girl about to fly an ancient ship toward the sun while every world watches. Halloran taught her to read. He taught her almost everything. And on Lamplighting Day she means to tell the whole Reach the one secret that could break the Crown, and him. Told backward from the day it all comes apart, this is the story of an old man, a fierce girl and the first hole he ever punched by choice.