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HarperCollins digital-first division One More Chapter has scooped a “visionary” YA fantasy trilogy by Jennifer Hayashi Danns.
Bethan Morgan, editor, acquired world all language rights to The Mu Chronicles direct from the author through open submissions. The first title, Beneath the Burning Wave, will publish in August.
The Mu Chronicles has already garnered critical recognition in the form of the 2021 Taner Baybars Award for original fiction in the fields of science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism from the Society of Authors, as well as a project grant from Arts Council England.
Beneath the Burning Wave follows Kaori and Kairi, the first twins to survive infancy on the ancient island of Mu, where gender is as fluid as the crashing waves. The synopsis says: “One was born of fire, the other of water. But there’s a reason why no twins have survived before, a prophecy that has haunted the elders since time began, a rivalry destined to sink the entire island beneath a twin catastrophe of volcano and tsunami. As hatred spills from the forbidden twins like the deadly poison of sacrificed sea snakes, they must decide what matters to them most… The fight for the island, for tradition and duty. Or the fight for freedom, for love and light.”
Morgan said: “This extraordinary book is one of those ones I’d love to put into the hands of every single fantasy reader, both veterans of the genre and those coming to it afresh, for how it explores the origins of gender and desire within this intricately-wrought mystical framework, evoking Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses series in how it flips a normalised worldview on its head in order to anatomise it. I was completely fascinated by this story from the very first page and it will undoubtedly be one of the most special I’ll get to work on in my entire career.”
Hayashi Danns is a writer who spent a decade in Japan teaching English. She is an alumna of Faber Academy online and has published short stories and poems in various anthologies.
She said: “I am excited to work with One More Chapter, a digital-first publisher with an ethos of publishing page-turning fiction. I am also excited for readers to discover The Mu Chronicles trilogy and enjoy a thrilling page-turning adventure with queer characters of colour.”