"While vacationing at the beach with her mother, Sasha Samokhina meets the mysterious Farit Kozhennikov under the most peculiar circumstances. The teenage girl is powerless to refuse when this strange and unusual man with an air of the sinister directs her to perform a task with potentially scandalous consequences. He rewards her effort with a strange gold coin ... As summer ends, her domineering mentor directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies ... As she quickly discovers, the institute's 'special technologies' are unlike anything she has ever encountered. The books are impossible to read, the lessons are obscure to the point of maddening, and the work refuses memorization ... Yet despite her fear, Sasha undergoes changes that defy the dictates of matter and time"--Dust jacket flap.
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