Book One of the KIRINS trilogy, The Spell of No'an, opens with a deadly menace threatening kirins everywhere. Elamare, a depraved kirin magician at Stonehenge, has dispatched monsters to attack kirins anywhere who know of his evil conduct. Two young kirins in the central part of North America, Gilin, an astute lad, and Talli, a spirited girl, have this knowledge and are thus in constant danger.

Their clans choose Talli and Gilin, devoted to each other, and three companions for a highly improbable mission—to destroy Elamare. As they fly eastward on trained ravens, a severe thunderstorm splits the party in two. Gilin and Talli are separated. The two parties search for each other in vain, both finally deciding to proceed alone.

On an impulse, a human youngster, Nathan, shoots Gilin's raven down with a shotgun. Gilin escapes injury, but knows that without help the raven will die. Visible to humans since being attacked by Elamare's monsters, Gilin confronts Nathan and his family. Awestruck by the miniature being, Nathan's grandfather secretly shelters the tiny explorers and their birds in his hunting lodge. In the first cooperation between the two races in eons, the kirins and humans nurse the bird back to health, and come to know and esteem each other.

Through magical instruments the traveling parties finally come together, but celebrate only briefly, knowing they have infinitely more to do before the mission is complete.

Talli and Gilin sit gazing into a campfire. He takes her hand. "I wonder if we'll succeed," he says. She squeezes his hand. "Everything depends on it."

This magical adventure will leave you yearning for more.

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