  | Tale of plagues and perfumes Author: Halpern, Jake | |
| Price: $23.28 | ||
Summary:
Twelve-year-old Nia, a girl with a secret heightened sense of smell, escapes her plague-ridden port city to train at the mysterious Cloister, where she meets others with sensory powers and discovers that the Cloister holds both sinister secrets and the key to a possible cure.
| Added Entry - Personal Name: | Kujawinski, Peter |
Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews (11/01/25)
The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (00/12/25)
Full Text Reviews:
Other - 10/13/2025 Twelve-year-old Nia keeps her extraordinary sense of smell secret, worried that widespread knowledge of her ability would brand her as a Sinsory, a group of people with supernaturally strong senses who use their gifts to save the world from periodic plagues. But as whispers of a new outbreak spread throughout Nia’s city of Yerat, Nia is summoned to the Cloister, a windowless desert tower in which Sinsory children train to hone their skills. There, Nia befriends Lime, a girl with uncanny taste, and Lowe, a boy who can read minds through touch. When the rumored plague strikes, Nia must help develop an antidote by determining the right blend of scents, but after her first attempt goes awry and her test subject dies, she and her friends escape the Cloister in a bold gambit to uncover the plague’s source and its cure. In this relentlessly paced adventure, previous collaborators Halpern and Kujawinski (Edgeland) explore a water-starved desert setting that’s seemingly perpetually on the edge of disaster and home to a society seized by paranoia, desperation, and fiscal inequality. A wealth of sensate details grants the story a vivid atmosphere against which intrepid heroes quest to save their friends, family, and home. Nia is described as having tan skin; other characters read as white. Ages 10-14. Agent (for Halpern): Charlotte Simms, WME. (Jan.) - Copyright 2025
