For readers
For readers and book clubs
Everything here follows how far you have read. Set your chapter at the top of the page and later events stay folded away.
Start here
Read chapter 1
The opening pages: Talib, his father’s loom and a village waiting for rain.Safe before you readBook clubsThe book-club kit
Everything a host needs on one page: a meeting plan, what to cook and drink, printables and games for the group.Safe before you readBook clubsReading-group guide
Three meetings, questions that start from a scene, and ideas for hosting. Each meeting opens once you have read that far.Follows your chapterCompanionA companion to the novel
The world and its places, how the money and the water work, the people, and a note on every chapter.Follows your chapterLook it upPeople and words
Who is who in each part, the words of the Senebian world, and how to say the names.Safe before you readPlayGames and the ledger
Which keeper are you? A word game, quizzes, “Who said it?” and twelve stones to find.Follows your chapterFind a lineQuotation bank
Lines from across the novel with speakers and page numbers. Turn any line into a picture to share.Follows your chapterCast your stone
Hidden until you have read chapter 24.
A company offers the twelve villages of the Union fifty thousand dollars for every family, new mills, a university and a hospital, as part of up to two billion dollars across the region. In return it would hold a veto over every large investment and the first right to buy every bale of cotton and every litre of oil. Each representative is given a white stone for yes and a black stone for no.
Which stone would you drop in the pot?
Hidden until you have read chapter 25.
The count in chapter 25 was fourteen black to ten white, and the offer was refused. Chapter 26 shows what that cost.
