After her mother's mysterious death, Yeine Darr, an outcast from the barbarian north, is summoned to the floating city of Sky to claim a royal inheritance she never knew existed.

In the majestic city of Sky, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. However, the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is fiercely contested, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for her life, she is drawn ever closer to the secrets of her mother's death and her family's dark history.

With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Yeine will learn the perilous consequences when love and hate—and gods and mortals—are bound inseparably together.