Acknowledgments

A SECOND NOVEL POSES a fresh set of challenges and alarms, and I am especially grateful to my editors, Betsy Mitchell of Del Rey, and Jane Johnson and Emma Coode of HarperCollins UK, for their insights and excellent advice. I also owe many thanks to my team of beta readers on this one for all their help and encouragement: Holly Benton, Francesca Coppa, Dana Dupont, Doris Egan, Diana Fox, Vanessa Len, Shelley Mitchell, Georgina Paterson, Sara Rosenbaum, L. Salom, Micole Sudberg, Rebecca Tushnet, and Cho We Zen.

Many thanks to my sterling agent, Cynthia Manson, for all her help and guidance; and to my family for all their continuing advice and support and enthusiasm. And I’m lucky beyond measure in my very best and in-house reader, my husband, Charles.

And I want to say a special thanks to Dominic Harman, who has been doing one brilliant cover after another for both the American and British editions; it’s a thrill beyond measure to see my dragons given life in his art.