National Network for Equitable Library Service

In a world where everyone wears masks and superstitions abound, the color of your chrome determines who you are and where you will live. And if you will live. Asheva, a fourteen-year-old Chrome of the Black Nation, will see his world crumble underneath him as events too big for his age will force him to run away from his native city of Axyum. A new journey will take him to lands with different colors and different ways from the Black. From a desperate escape through the hills and forests of the Black Nation to the vast Blue Plains of the city of Ayas, Asheva will learn to face the dangerous wilderness and the even more dangerous nature of the Chromes, including the worst accusation a Chrome can be charged with. Only then will he realize that, beneath the masks that all Chromes wear, nothing is what it seems.