For centuries the colonists of Tyra suffered unexplained cycles of collapse and dark ages. Now, just as civilization seems to be clawing its way back, is that curse repeating, yet again?
Aya Voss is perennially unlucky. Caught as a child on the wrong side of the border, she grows up separated from homeland and family, always the outsider, isolated and tormented. Drafted out of school to help manufacture weapons for use against her own people, Aya struggles to survive and to rejoin those she left behind, as devasting war and plague and madness tear away all she knows.
Amid the tragic cycles on this world, people retained one consistent technology -- tying unpleasant memories to
a
melody,
then stashing them safely away in a box. At times a blessing, memory boxes long ago became tools of repression, hobbling humanity's ability to learn from mistakes.
Might Aya's new generation be the one to break this cycle at last and forge destiny anew?
The Melody of Memory
is a coming-of-age story, as Aya manages to join -- and then help lead -- a revolution. A revolution of courage and purpose, to see past her own pain and Tyra's. To help heal a wounded world.