In her skillful debut novel, Kij Johnson took the classic Japanese myth of the fox who dared to become a woman to win true love and created The Fox Woman, a tale of love and the nature of the soul. Set in the same universe as The Fox Woman, Johnson now enters the world of the creature Kagaya-hime, a woman-warrior and confidante to noblemen. This being started her journey as a tortoise-shell cat who saw her family destroyed by a fire that decimated most of the Imperial city. She has been rendered taleless, with no one but her left to pass on such stories as The Cat Born the Year the Star Fell and The Fire-Tailed Cat. Without her fudoki-self and soul and home and shrine-she cannot. keep the power of her clan together.