STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
Sci-fi and fantasy with Mat Coward
		The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman, The Plague Stones by James Brogden, No Way by SJ Morden and Fleet of Knives by Gareth L Powell
	
			TEENAGER Violet moves with her mother from a city life to look after an ailing relative in a small town hidden in the woods of rural New York in The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman (Titan, £8.99), a debut novel and presumably the first in a series.
To Violet, Four Paths seems like the armpit of America, a dull and insular place cut off from the world. But, as it turns out, her mother's hometown is much worse than boring. It’s deadly.
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