Start Here: Reading Devil's Crown

Devil's Crown: A World Divided is built the way the world it describes is built, in pieces that do not yet know they belong together. If you are picking it up for the first time, here is the shape of the thing.

Adamah has eight nations. The River Sentience runs through the middle of the continent, and the Endless Sea wraps around all of it. In the frozen northeast is Snowfall, shaped like a wolf, where King Taiga rules from a grand igloo. Just south of it are the caves of Penumbra, a kingdom that lives underground and marks its four exits with colors. West across the river is Socho, a fortress city with a queen, an elected council and a watermill. Below Socho stretch the grasslands of Champaign, where the Sioux follow the bison and the Raz follow the coyote. The southwestern tip is Morass, a swamp with a giant king and no god. East of the river lies Ophir, a jungle of gold ruled by Queen Makeda, and beyond a man-made strait is Cape Guard, a volcanic peninsula under King Jedidiah. South of all of it, in the desert, sits what is left of Betharaba.

The book rotates between these places. A chapter in Snowfall might be followed by one in Socho, then Ophir, then back north. Each chapter follows a point-of-view character, and that character's understanding of the world is the only one you get. Taiga does not know what Maya is doing. Makeda has never heard of the boy Chief of Thought. This is deliberate. The nations of Adamah are divided, and the reader is meant to feel that division by holding pieces of a picture that no single character can see.

A few anchors will help. In Snowfall, watch the royal family: Taiga, his three wives Aurora, Ivory and Poppy, and his four sons. In Penumbra, follow Zillah, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the murdered king, and Offede, the warrior sworn to protect her. In Socho, the Square Table is your compass: Queen Maya and her three Heads of War, Thought and Law. In Champaign, stay close to Chief Tatanka and his adopted son Bull. In Ophir, everything runs through Queen Makeda and her son Menelik. Cape Guard and Morass are seen mostly through the people they threaten, at least at first.

Then there is the ninth place. Eden is not a nation. It is an island no map shows, where someone is building a circular fortress with a room for every kingdom. Chapters set there are short and quiet, and they are the closest thing the book has to a promise that the pieces will eventually meet.

You do not need to memorize the lesser names. Clan leaders, captains and village elders come and go, and the book will remind you who they are when it matters. What you should track is who each character believes in and what they are afraid of. The devil in this story does not arrive with an army. He arrives as a thought a person already had. So when a character starts to sound a little more certain, a little more wronged, a little more alone, pay attention.

Start with the prologue. It is a soldier on a boat, unsure of where he is going, and it explains more of the book than anything I could write here. After that, trust the rotation. The chapters are shorter than they look, and the world is bigger than it seems.