Wow! Where Durst has always placed her books at least partly in our world, this is an otherworld fantasy, where there are flying serpents made of unbreakable glass, wolves made of sand, and subsurface giant worms that live in salt! Here the gods are vanishing and humans are in the midst of a great drought and famine, blaming the vessels who are supposed to house the gods when the gods don't come. But the god Raven, a wonderfully strong-hearted girl vessel, a troubled young emperor, and a handful of other vessels are determined not to let their world die!

(Oh, sorry--the book doesn't come out till September 2012. Sometimes it's great to be me!)