Dec 18, 2020
BLACK CANARY: BREAKING SILENCE
author Alexandra Monir talks about writing for the
DC Icons young adult series, adapting the fan-favorite Black Canary
and Court of Owls in a prose novel, and how she got the job of
writing a major media tie-in.
This DC Icons young adult novel reimagines the fan-favorite DC
comics superhero Dinah Lance as a teenager living in a near-future
dystopian Gotham City.
Decades ago, Gotham and its vigilante heroes fell to a violent
shadow organization called the Court of Owls. The Court has
reshaped the city in their patriarchal image, setting up a cruel
and vindictive autocracy. Dissenters are punished by superhuman
enforcers called Talons. And women in particular have been
subjugated—not just with the removal of rights and freedoms, but by
having their abilities of music and singing artificially
stifled.
Seventeen year old Dinah is fortunate to have been educated by
her parents about life before the Owls took over. A childhood
experience—hearing the forbidden, beautiful, impossible sound of a
woman singing—drives Dinah to seek out truths the Owls have buried.
Yet to resist the autocratic regime could land her, her friends,
and her police officer father in Arkham Asylum—or in the
morgue.
Dinah must find a way to unleash the incredible power of her
own voice to combat the Court of Owls. And perhaps she can find an
ally in her school’s new transfer student, a mysterious senior
named Oliver Queen.
BLACK CANARY: BREAKING SILENCE is the 5th standalone novel in
the DC ICONS series, and is available December 29th from Random
House Books for Young Readers.