Heart of Darkness meets Marlon James’s Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow in this exhilarating historical fantasy debut about what happens when the forces of progress slam against the forces of nature, and the unseen hand that moves us decides the fate of a cursed East African railroad.

February 1898. The sanguine Lt. Col. Patterson sails to Mombasa with a mission straight from London: to build a railway bridge at Tsavo, one hundred miles inland. It is hard work on loathsome territory, made harder when something begins picking off his men one by one. Oh, it looks like the work of lions, but as Patterson starts to investigate, he has reason to suspect the predator is something from another world, and things go from hard to dangerous to personal.

Enter Kifa, a Bogomo girl ostracized for her gift of cheating death, estranged from her twin brother and all hope of anything like friendship. She’s spent most of her life on the outskirts of society, but now she’s drawing attention from all the wrong places. Something from another world has come knocking, and it is asking for a favor.

Based on a true story, Peter Gikandi has crafted a thrilling novel brimming with history and magic, in a time and place where Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and Africans once collided, each bringing their gods with them.