Unnatural Magic

Onna is the fastest spell-writer in her village school, quicker than any of the young men beside her. The nation's premier arcane academy still refuses her a place. She takes ship for Hexos, a busy city-state, hoping to find a university that sees nothing improper in teaching magic to a woman.

She has barely landed when she is pulled into an investigation: four trolls have been murdered, and nobody knows by whom.

A second storyline follows Tsira, a troll who has never fitted in with her clan, though her father leads it. She leaves to look for work in a human city.

In the snow along the way she finds a human soldier close to death, and she nurses him back to health. A bond grows between the two, and it is put under strain when an unknown mage tries to kill her.

The two women know nothing of each other. Each puts her own considerable skill to work on the same task: finding whoever is targeting trolls before their homeland is torn apart. This is a fantasy novel told in alternating viewpoints, with a murder mystery running through it and a slow, unlikely friendship at its centre.