Exiled back to Montverre, an ancient and elite academy hidden in the mountains where his fate hangs in the balance, Léo Martin, in the rarified world of learning he once loved, feels a strange connection to the new Magister as the legendary Midsummer Game approaches.

Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a Bookbinder—a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice amongst their small community, but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse. For as long as he can recall, Emmett has been drawn to books, even though they are strictly forbidden. Bookbinding is a sacred calling, Seredith...