Assassin of Reality: A Novel (Vita Nostra, 2)

The eagerly anticipated sequel to the highly acclaimed Vita Nostra takes readers to the next stage in Sasha Samokhina’s journey in a richly imagined world of dark academia in which grammar is magic—and not all magic is good.In Vita Nostra, Sasha Samokhina, a third-year student at the Institute of Special Technologies, was in the middle of taking the final exam that would transform her into a part of the Great Speech. After defying her teachers’ expectations, Sasha emerges from the exam as Password, a unique and powerful part of speech. Accomplished and ready to embrace her new role, she soon learns her powers threaten the old world, and despite her hard work, Sasha is set to fail.However, Farit Kozhennikov, Sasha’s dark mentor, finds a way to bring her out of the oblivion and back to the Institute for his own selfish purposes. Subsequently, Sasha must correct her mistakes before she is allowed to graduate and is forced to do what few are asked and even less achieve: to succeed and reverberate—becoming a part of the Great Speech and being one of the special few who dictate reality. If she fails, she faces a fate far worse than death: the choice is hers. Years have passed around the Institute—and the numerous realities that have spread from Sasha’s first failure—but it is only her fourth year of learning what role she will play in shaping the world. Her teachers despise and fear her, her classmates distrust her, and a growing love—for a young pilot with no affiliation to the school—is fraught because a relationship means leverage, and Farit won’t hesitate to use it against her.Planes crash all the time. Which means Sasha needs to rewrite the world so that can’t happen...or fail for good.

Booklist (starred review)"This is a novel that transcends genre and will astound readers looking for serious, contemporary fiction."

"A tense, gripping, and satisfying story that will leave readers wondering about their own physical limits and what would be possible, if only one had the proper motivation. Translated from the original Russian, this dark and unforgiving magical world treats its characters in ways that make Harry Potter and even Naomi Novik's Scholomance Trilogy look like preschool."

a cross between Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian [...] is the anti-Harry Potter you didn’t know you wanted.”

“Vita Nostra

Lev Grossman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Magicians

“Vita Nostra has become a powerful influence on my own writing. It’s a book that has the potential to become a modern classic of its genre, and I couldn’t be more excited to see it get the global audience in English it so richly deserves.”

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Vita Nostra takes the trope of young people selected for a school for magic and transforms it into an unnerving, deeply philosophical coming-of-age tale. [...] Hersey’s translation is plain and straightforward, a wise choice that enhances the deep strangeness of this trippy, vivid novel.”

Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on Vita Nostra

“This dark, ambitious, and intellectually strenuous novel will feel like a fresh revelation to fantasy readers glutted with Western wish-fulfillment narratives.”

BookPage on Vita Nostra

“Imagine that Hogwarts has opened a satellite campus inside Harry Haller’s Magic Theater from Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, and assigned Kafka, Dostoevsky and Rod Serling to oversee the curriculum.”

About the Author

Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, a former actress and a former psychiatrist, are co-authors of over thirty novels and numerous short stories and screenplays. They were born in Ukraine and moved to California in 2013. Their books have been translated into several foreign languages and awarded multiple literary and film prizes. Marina and Sergey are recipients of the Award for Best Authors (Eurocon 2005), Prix Planete SF des blogueurs (2020), Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire (2020) and of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Rosetta Awards (2021).Sergey Dyachenko passed away in 2022, but his memory lives on in books.

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