Lion’s Blood

This novel imagines an alternate America in which Islamic African powers dominate the New World and Europeans are captured and sold into slavery. The story follows Aidan O’Dere, taken from his home as a boy and sold to the Wakil of a great plantation, and Kai, the Wakil’s son, who becomes both his master and reluctant friend. Barnes uses this inversion of history to examine slavery, power and identity while following their complicated relationship as they grow into adulthood and confront war and freedom in a world both familiar and incredibly strange.