A
Heart so Fierce and Broken, by Brigid Kemmerer.
Young Adults
This
is the sequel to ‘A Curse so Dark and Lonely’, Ms Kemmerer’s epic retelling of
the Sleeping Beauty legend (search drop box), but with a great contemporary
twist – that of introducing protagonists from our modern world into the
parallel kingdom of Emberfall, there to break the curse set by evil enchantress
Lilith that turns Crown Prince Rhen into a murdering monster: well, in
the best of fairytale traditions, true love in the shape of Harper
rescues him from the curse, his kingdom is freed, and everyone should live
happily ever after. Except that they
don’t.
Rhen
has inherited a kingdom in ruins after constant warfare; his subjects are starving, and there are
rumours that he is not the rightful Heir:
there is an older half-brother whose mother could practice magic, and no
matter how hard Rhen’s troops try to quell the gossip it still persists. The only high point in his life is his love
for Harper, so-called Princess of Disi, who has supposedly promised thousands
of troops from her country: Washington,
DC? If his subjects find out about that,
it will be the end of his reign – and of him.
Enter
Commander Grey, formerly his most loyal and trusted servant: Grey has discovered that he and Prince Rhen
are indeed brothers, but he decides the best thing to do is to leave Emberfall
and take up another identity; he doesn’t
want the crown under any circumstances and the less people know about him, the
better. Naturally, life is not like
that, particularly in fairy tales: he is
captured, cruelly flogged by Rhen’s men, eventually escapes thanks to trusted
friends, but is forced into an alliance with Karis Luran, queen of Syhl
Shallow, Rhen’s sworn enemy: she will
back him with troops and weapons, everything he needs for military success, if
he will vanquish Rhen’s army with his nascent magical powers – powers he wasn’t
aware that he had until he was flogged by Rhen’s order. Grey is in between the Devil and the Deep
Blue Sea. And to complicate life even
further, he begins to fall in love with Lia Mara, Karis Luran’s daughter, a
girl as good as her mother is evil: his
life is starting to slip beyond his famous discipline and control.
Ms
Kemmerer has us all by the scruff of the neck, and won’t let go: I was turning pages at a furious rate, and
was even more frustrated when I reached the end and found that an arch-villain,
thought dead, is still stirring up lethal trouble. It’s going to take aaaaages for the next
instalment to appear, and in Trump’s
America, anything could happen in that time. I hope it doesn’t! FIVE STARS.
No comments:
Post a Comment