The Fire Flowers of Canton

Nineteen-year-old Tam Yulan makes fire for a living on a sandbank in the Pearl River delta—signal rockets, festival flowers, and quickmatch that runs faster than a shout. Then pirates strip her family's works bare, press eleven village men, and she recognizes the gun-captain directing them: the brother buried eight years ago. Yulan rows out after him with her tools and a bad-tempered rooster, into a fleet where powder buys loyalty, betrayal is already paid for, and only she can read the fuse.