Booktok mystery solved, author identity revealed

A Broken Blade is Melissa Blair's first novel. Dec. 16/21 (Supplied)

An Indigenous woman from northern Ontario has been revealed as the author of a new book that has gained a lot of attention on the social media platform TikTok.

A mystery involving a new book called A Broken Blade unfolded over two weeks to the book-loving community, known as BookTok, Nibi Books said in a news release Thursday. The book's TikTok account has accumulated more than 300,000 video views.

On Dec. 1, a group of BookTok creators started receiving packages that contained wax seals, a copy of the book written by anonymous and a letter that contained a coded message.

The message was decoded on Dec. 15 and Melissa Blair was revealed to be the anonymous author.

"Blair is an Anishinaabe-kwe BookTok-er who posts content about her favourite pieces of Indigenous and feminist fiction, non-fiction, and writing styles," Nibi Books said.

"She wrote A Broken Blade after noticing a gap of paranormal fantasy stories told by Indigenous authors. The self-published book is action-packed with lovable characters, but also explores deeper themes of colonialism and systemic violence."

A Broken Blade is about a female spy and assassin who must hunt down a mysterious figure and save herself and her kingdom.

In the first two weeks of its release, 4,000 copies of Blair's first novel have been sold.

She splits her time between Treaty 9 in northern Ontario and the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg in Ottawa. She has more than 33,000 followers on TikTok under the handle melissas.bookshelf, where some of her videos reach hundreds of thousands of views.