Agile and brilliant, intricate like a talisman, with strands of lyricism, humor, romance, and horror, Cloud Shadows explores the frightening, overwhelming, and, ultimately, unconquerable mysticism of girlhood and the journey we each take to understand the choices our forebears made before we were even born. It is charismatic, lore-steeped, magnificent. Part fairy tale, part blunt look at the cost of surviving, Cloud Shadows is legend itself, the legend of the gods, of family secrets, of the stories we craft about ourselves if we have the audacity to try. With rocky mountain, lapping sea, and ancestral song, Kini Collins delivers a benediction upon daughters who don't fit in.