11 of the Best New Books of April
fatal destiny By Tessia Tsai
Kang Siying is a priestess whose job is to escort the dead home and this helps her earn a living. This helped him not to be afraid of death. But when her own father becomes ill, Siying realizes her fears and knows she needs to do everything within her power to get her father the medicine he needs. She’s offered a very lucrative job that comes with a lot of dangers: going to an unfriendly kingdom to retrieve the corpse of a missing prince. She needs money, so she takes the job.
However, things are not normal after his arrival. Putting her amulet on the prince’s corpse brings him back to life, rather than putting him under a spell that forces him to follow her orders. Siying knows that if he does not have enough life force within him he will not be able to live long.
So the prince makes her an even better offer than what she has already taken. She will help him find and purify evil spirits to build his life force. But as she accompanies him on this quest, battling all manner of evil spirits, Siyun begins to discover what caused the prince to disappear, and that it may now be coming for her too.
The Chinese folk practice of necromancy inspires it. Necromancy in general has been an interesting topic in many YA books in the last year. – Kelly Jensen