Book excerpt: Once, a man became a bear became a god. Later still, a princess became a god became a queen who died and was forgotten. There was one man behind it all, one god with a plan that seemed to stretch beyond their time and years into the future. The queen rises again at his command, a thousand years later, and Kore Murphy, who doesn't yet see the reason for rebellion against her country's king and doesn't have the time for stories turning out to be true, is not expecting to become entangled in the mess of gods. She isn't expecting a war, or the betrayal of her best friend, or even the something simmering inside her that seems to make even the gods afraid. She certainly isn't expecting to have to stop the gods from terribly entangling themselves in the rebellion of her own country against the crown. There is still something, something strange about how the gods look at her, as though they know who she is and what she is supposed to do . . .