City of Beasts by Corrie Wang takes place in a world where men and women live divided by a river. Check out an exclusive cover reveal and excerpt right here!

“If you see a beast, and you have the shot, don’t hesitate. Kill it.”

This is the first line for the official synopsis of City of Beasts by Corrie Wang. It takes on a different meaning when you recognize that the beasts the speaker is referring to is men.

The world has been divided and men and women live separately. Glori has been taught they her male counterparts are beasts and she’s been brought up knowing exactly how to defend herself against them. But when her mother gives birth to a little boy, she starts to wonder if everything she’s been taught is not quite what it seems.

When her brother is taken to the City of the Beasts, Glori and her best friend Su infiltrate the city to get him back. There, they meet a beast named Sway, who is nothing like the monsters she has been told to fear.

I can already tell this book poses some big questions, and it’ll be interesting to see how the author tackles them. But since we have some time before we can get our hands on a copy of City of Beasts, we’ll have to settle with revealing the gorgeous and colorful cover for the book.

But what if you want to know more? Then you’re in luck! Here’s a snippet from the upcoming City of Beasts, broken down between two timelines — then and now.

‘City of Beasts’ chapter reveal

THEN

“Hey, Twofer, who loves you even more than she loves cornbread with berries?”

It was the deepest of the dark hours, and Two Five was hiding in the space next to my bed, scraping at a chip of paint that was flaking off the baseboard. I wedged myself in alongside it.

“Glori does,” I answered.

The day had started fine. We’d gone to Costco, and I pulled Twofer around the empty aisles on the patched river float I’d scavenged a few years back. After, we’d played hide-and-seek for the thousandth time, then raced back to the house. Niraasha was on duty, and we had our lessons. Then everyone came home from career and school. All fineness crumbled at dinner. Su snapped at Twofer for eating too loudly. I scolded it for not saying please when asking for dessert. And Liyan shooed it from the kitchen when it offered to help with dishes. And Grand? She was avoiding it like usual and still hadn’t come home yet.

“Hey, Two Five, who loves you more than she loves putting rocks in Liyan’s shoes?”

I bumped its tiny shoulder. This time a muttered reply. “Glori does.”

“That’s right. Who loves you more than she loves drawing Su while she’s sleeping?” I tilted my head back, mouth wide open. A giggle. It was instantly happy again. “Glori does.”

“And who loves me more than catching crickets for dinner?”

Standing up, Twofer pointed at itself and whispered, “Glori does!” then squealed with delight at its smarty-pants flub and flung itself into my embrace. And right then, I knew I loved that little beast more than the bright green of new growing things. More than temperate evenings or a full belly. Really, more than anything else in the world. So I suggested the one thing I knew it needed. Which also happened to be the one thing we weren’t allowed to do.

“Want to go see the neighborhood?” I whispered.

Two Five gave a little gasp and nodded seriously with big, round eyes. So we did.

A few hours later, the beasts came and stole Two Five away.

NOW

“If you see a beast and you have the shot, don’t hesitate. Kill it.”

Su and I are sitting on our cracked driveway as her mom, Liyan, checks her bicycle tires. Foregoing her solar flashlight, she moves quickly and works mainly by feel. We’re all used to the dark, but on this freezing, moon-hidden night this new cul-de-sac feels even more desolate than our last one considering the nonworking streetlights and deserted houses are essentially the same.

Across the street, a section of broken vinyl siding flaps in the wind.

We all jump.

“But if there’s more beasts than you can handle,” Liyan continues glaring out into the darkness, “what do you do? Su?”

With a smirk, Su pretends to slo-mo swing a hatchet. “I chop them all into tiny bits.”

I’m only half listening. We’ve been through this beast protocol what feels like every day of our last seventeen years. Prior to this morning, the lessons had begun to seem like superstitious safety precautions. Like not stepping on sidewalk cracks. Now the beasts had actually attacked. And they didn’t only snatch Two Five. They raided the neighborhood, too. Killing seven of our most senior fees in the process.

Liyan smacks Su on the back of her freshly shaved head.

“Ow, Ma.” Su winces. “Okay, okay. If there’s more beasts than we can handle and we haven’t been spotted, we stay hidden. If we have been spotted, we run.”

“And how many is ‘more beasts than you can handle’?” Liyan asks. Su rolls her eyes. “More than one absurd, measly beast per fee.”

Liyan nods curtly as my Grand Mati hurries from the house carrying her pack and both of their weapons. We call her Grand because with her signature messy braid and DNA strand finger tattoos, she barely looks older than my mom, so grandma has always seemed ill-fitting. Grand because with her sun-warm laughter and biting wit, she quite simply is.

Everything single thing about her.

“Absurd,” my grand snaps, “is getting killed because you put yourself in jeopardy when you just as easily could have kept yourself safe. Fees don’t take uncalculated risks.”

This is meant for me, but as my grand tosses Liyan the katana that usually hangs above the fireplace, I feign deafness. We spent the entire day moving from our old house to this one a few ’sacs over. We’d considered this house when we first moved out here years ago. Grand had liked the three-story roof’s vantage point, but there had still been two corpses sitting at the kitchen table.

“Pass,” I remember Su and I saying simultaneously.

Now, the bodies are gone. And if my grand and Liyan would leave already, Su and I would be, too.

“We’ll message as soon as we get to the labs,” Grand says, affixing her arm-length electric cattle prod to her bike. “Keep your portables charged. Lock the doors. Stay in the same rooms but don’t sleep at the same time. No lights of any kind after dark. Obviously don’t go near the shore, and if you hear screams coming from the neighborhood, stay put, you hear me?”

“Yes,” Su and I say, both shocked by her tone. But because I am angry and scared, I also mumble, “It’s not like we are inexperienced with the
effects of a beast attack.”

As one, we all look in through the living room window. Even in the pitch-blackness, Majesty’s skeletal outline is visible on the sofa.

Majesty. That was what my grand named my mother. This was around the time when natural disasters were wiping out island nations and coastal shorelines. When fees were choosing names for their daughters that were wistfully optimistic. Prosperity. Peace. Hope. In every language under the sun.

Majesty.

It’s been almost six years since she escaped from the beasts. More and more her name feels like a cruel joke. It’s been months since I even heard her speak. Until this morning.

“What about Two Five?” I ask, my voice breaking ever so slightly as they rush to leave.

Eight hours, Twofer’s been gone. In that time, our EMS killed the two beasts that murdered our fees. My Grand Mati has made three trips into the neighborhood to console the victims’ families. Twice she’s gone to the labs to do “damage and retaliation control.” She has exchanged countless heated PTT messages with various fees. Yet not once has she mentioned a plan for getting Two Five back.

Now she comes to me and puts her forehead against mine.

“Glori, I lost Two Five and seven of my closest friends today. I can’t risk any more lives sending fees across the river to look for Twofer and…” She presses on as I try to protest. “I need all the EMS here protecting us. But I promise you—I promise—the beasts will not get away with this.”

The wind picks up and blows in an unmistakable scent. Snow’s com- ing. Soon and a lot. Of course she wouldn’t attempt a rescue. Twofer being gone solved so many problems.

“Mati,” Liyan says, releasing Su from a swift hug. “We have to go.” “I love you, Spark Plug,” my grand says, a hand pressed to my cheek. She waits a beat for me to reply, but I don’t, and a moment later Su and

I are watching their breath trail them in frosty clouds as they peddle away. No sooner are they out of sight than Su asks, “You ready, Roach?”

It sounds more like, You sure?

I get the hesitation. Not only does Su not love Twofer as much as I do, but our wing chung and cross training and survival skills all assume beasts coming to attack us. Now we’re going there. And truth?

We don’t have an inkling what to expect.

Yet I nod confidently as I pull a knit cap on to cover my coiled braids. Running back inside for our packs, I kiss a nonresponsive Majesty on her dry cheek, then hurriedly write a note with our last working pen. My letters rough and unpracticed.

We leave it on the kitchen table.

Me, hoping most of that would be true.

City of Beasts by Corrie Wang hits store shelves on September 17, 2019. You can pre-order it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, and Book Depository, or add it to your Goodreads list.