Blood Magic by Matthew Cook

With the power of her blood magic--a dark sorcery even she does not understand--Kirin avenges her twin sister's murder. Alone, except for the grotesque but loyal creatures she can create from souls and dead flesh, she fights to survive. When the inhuman Mor crawl up from their underground world to wage war, Kirin serves as scout and archer -- and finds comfort in the arms of Jazen Tor, a sergeant in the Imperial Army. But it is beautiful, gentle Lia Cho, who can call lightning from the sky, who teaches Kirin about herself. Even with Lia as an ally, Kirin must still confront the hatred of her own kind and, together, they must face the seemingly invincible Mor.

Matthew Cook is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As many Fine Arts graduates do, he took a normal, respectable job, one good for paying the bills but terrible at nourishing the soul. He spent several years trying to keep his illustration, digital graphics and photography skills sharp, even resorting to wedding photography when things were truly dire. More than ten years later, he was still no closer to making anything resembling a living in the visual arts, so he turned to his other great love: literature. In a bout of desperate optimism, he began on a mammoth undertaking: an urban fantasy trilogy set in his beloved Chicago. Four years later, while "taking a break" from editing that (still unfinished) project, he had this strange idea for a necromancer named Kirin . . .

Matt lives and works in Columbus, Ohio and is working on a second book about Kirin (working title: Nights of Sin) that will be published by Juno Books in 2008.