Maidens of the Fall

Octavia blames magical girls for the collateral damage that killed her parents and left her disabled. She resents their power as figureheads of the state, beyond reproach, beyond revenge. She hates their necessity; magical girls, young women chosen by the Dream-Gods of Earth, are the only ones who can turn back the Nightmares that creep through the open wound in reality, cut through England’s heart. In the decades since the wall between the waking world and the Dreamlands came crashing down, no amount of fire-power can match divine favour.

Octavia’s greatest wish is to go unnoticed, to avoid the government censors and the emotional hygiene officers, England’s front line in the war on dreams. She must swallow her rage and her desire. She must ignore a hopeless love for her best friend, though going to university is about to part them forever.

But then a magical girl attacks another one in broad daylight, in a terrorist bombing. Octavia finds herself arrested, both witness and suspect. The only way out is a contract with a Dream-God, but this divine trickster isn’t from Earth.

Fugitive, public enemy, her life in ruins, Octavia discovers there’s a whole other type of magical girl out there, and now she’s one of them. Freedom and revenge no longer seem impossible. If only her new ‘sisters’ weren’t just as broken as she. But the world can’t go on like this for much longer; things worse than Nightmares are seeping through the ragged edges of reality — Dreamers from the deep, echoes of strange Gods, and magical girls nobody recognises.

Octavia knows she’s a pawn in a cosmic game. Can she cross the board and become a queen, before the waking world comes apart at the seams?