Risuko

Kano Murasaki is a fatherless girl in Serenity Province, and everyone calls her Risuko, which means Squirrel. She is happiest high in a tree, far from the battlefields and court intrigues of a Japan worn down by a hundred years of civil war.

The war reaches her anyway. Serenity is under attack, the Kano family is in disgrace, and some people believe Risuko could bring victory. She is pulled into a plot that may reunite the country or destroy it, and she is torn from her home and what remains of her family.

At a new school she makes friends, though the place may not be what it seems. The nation is a game board, its armies are the pieces, and scheming lords move them. A single girl seems to have no power over the outcome, and the book asks whether that is true.

This is historical adventure fiction with a touch of magic, written for young adult and middle-grade readers. It follows Risuko through the first dangerous steps toward learning who she is. She narrates in her own voice at the start, and her only wish at that point is to climb.