She will be the Primera of her household, married into the Garcia family in two days time – but her pedigree is a lie, forgeries paid for by parents desperate to keep her from starving. Seventeen year old Daniela Vega is the top student at the Medio School for Girls and is expected to pursue a promising future – and marriage – upon her graduation in two days. The city is divided in two, and outside the middle island’s prosperity nothing but scorched earth and dying oceans await them. Meanwhile, the unlucky lower classes, the cast-off children of the Salt God, protest the violence and unfairness into which they have been plunged, the death, destruction and chaos. Both roles are equally important and favorable, and mean a life in high-class luxury far away from where Daniela was raised.

The Medio School for Girls’ job is to test and train these upper crust girls and figure out which of the two roles they fall into – the Primera (Constancia) or Segunda (Moon Goddess), then ensure their marriage to wealthy men. The upper crust of society are the descendants of the Sun God and his two wives women are expected to behave in either the manner of Constancia, the first wife, whose logic-driven intelligence means she’s the first wife and will run the household, or The Moon Goddess, whose highly emotional bravery and nurturing nature means she is to be his bedmate and take care of the children. In the far-flung future, Medio has been run for thousands of years on the principle of the ancient legend of the thieving Salt God and the financially ripe Sun God.

Set the dark on fire