Red Riding Hood, here called Rosa, survived the wolf attack that killed her grandmother. The event convinces her of the evil of the grundwirgen, speaking animals whom her grandmother had tried to teach here were just as much people as humans, but whom her mother had raised her to hate. Her mother’s point proven right, she sets off on a quest to rid the world of grundwirgen, teaming up with Goldie (whom she rescued from bears, and whom she later realizes is a thief and a con artist). But by the time readers meet Rosa, she’s left that life long behind, and now accompanies Hou Yi, the famous archer of Chinese lore, on a quest to keep people safe from unthinking monsters. (Hou Yi is traditionally described as male; here she is female, and she complains that Westerners from Rosa’s lands “insist on calling me a man.”)
