The House of Shattered Wings

Many thanks to John Berlyne, John Wordsworth, and Stefan Fergus for making the right encouraging sounds on the first scenes of this; and the right comments on how best to revise this once I was done with the hard slog of writing it. My editors, Gillian Redfearn at Gollancz and Jessica Wade at Roc, are awesome, and their suggestions really helped put this book into (I hope) much better shape than the one I handed in. Many thanks as well to the Gollancz and Roc teams for their work on the book, and putting up with my newbie questions.

Finally, this book would not have happened if not for the support of Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, who listened to me vent about my inability to produce something I had faith in, and convinced me to put together an old idea of ground angel bones as magic and my abortive urban fantasy set in Paris—and who was beside me at every stage of the process. I could not have finished this without her.

And, as always, thanks to my husband, Matthieu; my son the snakelet (mainly for not crashing my laptop too much when I was revising the manuscript!); my sister for the general support, laughter and geeking over books; my parents and paternal grandparents for the love of reading—and a special thanks to my Ba Ngoai for the myths and legends that underpin the Seine.