OTTILIE COLTER AND THE NARROWAY HUNT

In this Australian trilogy opener, a girl infiltrates an all-male monster hunting organization to save her abducted brother.

Cautious Ottilie has always followed her brother, Gully, who—though almost two years her junior—is the more confident and daring of the two. They live with their neglectful mother in abject poverty on the fringes of civilization in the Swamp Hollows. When Gully fails to come home one night, Ottilie learns of boys going missing and sets off to save her brother. To follow him, she must disguise herself as a boy and sneak into the midst of another group of abductees. After Ottilie, masquerading as Ott, arrives at the Narroway—a place none of them have ever heard of—she’s reunited with Gully and told that the boys have been specially selected to serve in the Narroway Hunt to protect their kingdom’s border from dangerous, monstrous dredretches. Only Gully and a female sculkie friend (while boys are huntsmen, girls can only be servants) know of Ottilie’s secret as she plots an escape while also falling deeper into Narroway culture, seeing horrors and coming to embrace the mission’s importance. Exquisite worldbuilding keeps a strong sense of discovery and balances the appeal of the huntsman’s life with the deeply unfair society and hints of conspiracies afoot. Amid thrilling action, plot threads set up the next installment. Ottilie is pale; Gully has bronze skin; most other characters default to White.

A must-read for fans of the genre.