Tales of Bastunia: "The Return" (Book 2)

Nothing will ever be the same for Joan Daniels.

She wouldn’t say she loved her old life, but she had gotten used to it. She had found a way to make being a No-Beast work. But now Joan has become the very thing she hates most: a Beastborn. To complicate matters further, this one is no ordinary Calling. This one comes with a history that threatens the safety of the entire world. As Joan struggles to wrap her mind around what has happened, her father takes the lead. Joan quickly begins to wonder if he has her best interests at heart…

About the Tales of Bastunia series:

For all of history, the god of Bastunia has bestowed upon the people a gift: a spiritual beast-companion that helps them on their life’s Path. In the span of a couple hundred years, they have turned from barbarians into high society. But when the god vanishes, leaving people to find their own way, their civilized world begins to fall apart.

First there was Discovery, a period of history that emerged out of an unknown past. Time began here with the first scrawlings of the Record. Next, a gifted god with his ingenuities and the help of a few chosen Bastunians, created Order. It was a time of enlightenment, achievement, and great expansion. The people were certain that Order was an epoch that would never end. But, the darkness of the cosmos hid chaos-spawn whose lives were devoted to destruction. Order lasted barely one hundred years. At the eve of the second century, the god’s creation began to show cracks. It was an era marked by apparent neglect, by abandonment, by turmoil, and it was aptly named the Crumble. Now the god has been completely missing for sixteen years, and Bastunia is well into the modern era: the Fall. 

A young girl, a mousey friend, and a disgraced hero find themselves unlikely allies in the quest to find the missing God, and restore Order.