Ebony Gate: The Phoenix Hoard

A CALIBA 2023 Golden Poppy Book Award Finalist

Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle’s Ebony Gate is a female John Wick story with dragon magic set in contemporary San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Emiko Soong belongs to one of the eight premier magical families of the world. But Emiko never needed any magic. Because she is the Blade of the Soong Clan. Or was. Until she’s drenched in blood in the middle of a market in China, surrounded by bodies and the scent of blood and human waste as a lethal perfume.

The Butcher of Beijing now lives a quiet life in San Francisco, importing antiques. But when a shinigami, a god of death itself, calls in a family blood debt, Emiko must recover the Ebony Gate that holds back the hungry ghosts of the Yomi underworld. Or forfeit her soul as the anchor.

What’s a retired assassin to do but save the City by the Bay from an army of the dead?

Julia Vee likes stories about monsters, money, and good food. Vee was born in Macao and grew up in Northern California, where she studied at UC Berkeley and majored in Asian Studies. She is a graduate of the Viable Paradise workshop.

Ken Bebelle turned his childhood love for reading sci-fi and fantasy into a career in prosthetics. After twenty years he came back to books, writing about plucky underdogs and ancient magical artifacts with deadly secrets. He and his wife live in the Pacific Northwest and he still dreams of growing perfect tomatoes.

Bebelle and Vee have written together since middle school.