Greta, former Duchess of Halifax and heir to the Pan Polar Alliance throne, chose to merge her body with AI (artificial intelligence) instead of execution, hoping she might change a world in which an AI known as Talis believes in peace through force and fear. Talis executes the children of world leaders who don’t stay in line, and sometimes annihilates entire cities to make a point. As Greta goes through the potentially deadly adaptation to AI, she and Talis, occupying the body of a Swan Rider named Rachel, travel with two other Swan Riders, Francis Xavier and Sri. Swan Riders serve as Talis’s enforcers and guards, and also allow him to take human form. Greta is a likely target for kidnappers or killers, but Talis ends up the focus of a calculated physical attack that severs Rachel from Talis’s AI network, leaving the version of Talis in Rachel’s body wholly, vulnerably human. And that’s exactly the point: The attackers want Talis to remember his humanity—he was human once—and rethink his approach to peacemaking. They also want him to understand that Swan Riders suffer, and pay a huge price, when he uses their bodies to walk through the world. This sequel to Scorpion Rules explores questions of personal and political ethics through immensely satisfying, complex characters and plotting as it examines what it means to be human. (Age 14 and older)

Treacherous twists await Greta as the stakes get even higher in this stunning follow-up to the “masterful” (School Library Journal, starred review) novel, The Scorpion Rules.

Greta Stuart has become AI. New transmitters have silvered her fingerprints. New receptors have transformed her vision. And the whole of her memory has become one book in a vast library of instant knowledge. Greta is ready to rule the world.

But the new technology is also killing her.

Greta is only sixteen years old, but her new enhancements are burning through her mortal body at an alarming rate. Of course the leader of the AIs, an ancient and compelling artificial intelligence named Talis, has a plan. Greta can simply do what he’s done when the time comes, and take over the body of one of the Swan Riders, the utterly loyal humans who serve the AIs as part army, part cult.

First though, Greta will have to find a way to stay sane inside her new self. Talis’s plan for that involves a road trip. Escorted by Swan Riders, Greta and Talis set out on a horseback journey across the strange and not-quite-deserted landscape of Saskatchewan. But there are other people interested in Greta, people who want to change the world…and the Swan Riders might not be as loyal as they appear…