The prison-city of Osylum floats in the midst of an endless abyss. The reclusive Lady rules it; distant, inscrutable, and never seen. Her will is imposed by the Wardens, eldritch creatures who tend to the convicts' needs but also ruthlessly purge anyone who tries to escape.
Osylum's newest inmate, the witch Oneirotheria, has no memory of who she is, where she came from, or why she is imprisoned. Instead, her mind is a mess of spells and lore and other people's voices. The city mirrors her internal confusion; a jumble of broken buildings covered in hundreds of snippets of graffiti.
As Oneirotheria re-assembles her own shattered past (aided by a few inmates of dubious intent), she learns she may hold not just the key to escape, but the intertwined secrets of the city's origin and a lost love that transcends countless lives.
For readers of Susanna Clarke's Piranesi and Madeline Miller's Circe, The Witch & The City introduces a lyrical and baroque fantasy world, where an ocean lurks behind every mirror, puppets pull the strings of the living, and even the skulls have secrets to tell... if a witch knows how to listen.