WELCOME TO CORUSCAR, WHERE MUSIC AND MAGIC INTERTWINE

It's 1928 in Coruscar, a multi-species nation founded by the Cores, colossal, crystalline manticores called monsters by their godlike creators, but revered by Humanity for their magic-the empathic 'affinity' they can impart to others-and for the captivating music made by their spines. On the eve of the country's Bicentennial, the utopia imagined by the Cores has been warped by a tyrannical elite of Humans dedicated to preserving the barrier not only between 'adepts' and 'common-sensors' but between the High Music of the nobility and People's Music. Centuries of careful cultivation of affinity have hardly translated into a society free from oppression.

Mica Kalekai, a rakish but earnest young aristocrat, has chosen two dangerous vocations at this volatile time: an apprentice Tuner of the Beasts, and a promoter of the Afterdark-the People's Music she loves. Mica's privilege as a Tuner depends on her renunciation of all emotional attachment, but she becomes entangled with the lives of people who will alter the course of Coruscar's history: a singer destined to be a martyr, the revolutionaries of The Absent Root, and most perilously of all, Chalcy Greenglass, an irresistible Afterdarker determined to possess, at any cost, the High Music forbidden to her.

Many forces have an interest in the future of Coruscar-dead as well as living. But the rebellion of the Beasts everyone has taken for granted will prove the most transformative of all.

TO TUNE THE BEAST, the first book in the Coruscar duology, is the debut novel by Sun Hesper Jansen, author of the poetry and artwork collection Fairy of Disenchantment.