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Tory (Victoria) Brennan is grand-niece to the famous Temperance Brennan. She lives on Morris Island with her father, who is a professor at Charlotte University and a researcher at nearby Loggerhead Island. Tory hangs out with the other kids who live on Morris - Ben, Hiram, and Shelton - and together they stumble into an adventure and discover a decades old unsolved murder. While wandering on Loggerhead Island, they run into a group of chimps, one of whom has found some soldier's dog tags, now heavily encrusted; they sneak into an unused lab to clean the tags, and while they are there they discover a secret experiment being done on the island wolf-dog pup Cooper. They Rescue him and nurse him back to health, but somehow they all get sick, even though parvovirus shouldn't be contagious to humans; they also start to experience weird side-effects somehow related to this cross-bred parvovirus variant with wolf DNA.

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What could be just another run-of-the-mill fantasy novel-- with an oppressed people, and a rebellion brewing to overthrow the evil tyrant, and the obligatory orphan-waif discovering her powers -- somehow isn't. I think the biggest reason for this is the unique metal-based magic or "allomancy," which is fascinating and different from any other magic I have ever read about. There are "mistings" and "mistborns" who can burn metals for different effects, and there are also the secretive, nearly wiped out Terrismen who can use metal to store things - knowledge, power - in what they call "metalminds." The rebellion is a bit different, too-- instead of the normal, honorable rebels, the ringleader Kelsier recruits a crew of cons and thieves, which is why he thinks they might actually be able to succeed.

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