A third-year student at the Institute of Special Technologies, where grammar is magic and graduates join the Great Speech, Sasha Samokhina aces final exams as a singularly powerful aspect of language: Password. But her powers threaten the establishment, and as she finds herself manipulated by an unscrupulous mentor, she realizes that she must find a way to rewrite the world—and possibly fail big. A sequel to the multi-starred Vita Nostra; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

The award-winning Dyachenkos return to the characters of their international best-seller Vita Nostra. After a reality altering third-year exam, Sasha—or at least one version of herself—is back at school. She attends the Institute of Special Technologies, where students practice to transcend human existence by becoming grammatical expressions. Even among these extraordinary students, Sasha's talent is unique and her studies more dangerous. Outside of the institute, she meets Yaroslav, a pilot, and falls in love. Yaroslav is often traveling, and Sasha finds companionship in caring for Yaroslav's father, Anton. As trusted teachers leave the institute and new ones arrive, Sasha knows that every relationship can be used against her, but isolation also leads to failure. She struggles with increasingly difficult lessons that have fatal consequences and wonders what possible future there could be when the goal is to not exist. VERDICT As with the previous book, inventive storytelling delves into philosophical concepts such as time, meaning, and language. This is a novel that transcends genre and will astound readers looking for serious, contemporary fiction.—Catherine Lantz