The Syntax of Shores

About this book

In the Tide-Run Archipelago, geography is a function of language; salt-lichen glyphs growing on the coastline dictate the physical borders of the world with every high tide. Edda Lorne, a meticulous junior Shore Registrar for the powerful Cartographers’ Guild, has spent her life adhering to the strict grammar of reality, seeking stability in a world where streets lengthen and laws shift daily. Her talent for reading the living script is unmatched, but when she surveys a remote fishing hamlet, the subsequent tide erases the village from existence—not physically, but bureaucratically. The inhabitants remain, bewildered and wet, but are now legally 'unplaced,' stripped of all rights and citizenship. Ordered by her superiors to 'correct the record,' Edda uncovers a terrifying conspiracy: the Guild isn’t just recording the world’s changes, they are cultivating specific lichen strains to rewrite history and erase undesirable populations. Forced to choose between the safety of the rules she cherishes and the lives of the people she 'deleted,' Edda goes on the run with a disgraced glaciologist and a local fisherman. Together, they must navigate the shifting, treacherous syntax of the islands to find the Primal Text—the original, unedited coastline—before the next spring tide finalizes the erasure of everything she loves.