Published: December 20th 2011 by Mira (first published December 11th 2011)
Pages: Paperback, 390
Genre: High Fantasy, Adventure, Young Adult, Romance
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Laying hands upon the injured and dying, Avry of Kazan assumes their wounds and diseases into herself. But rather than being honoured for her skills, she is hunted. Healers like Avry are accused of spreading the plague that has decimated the Territories, leaving the survivors in a state of chaos.
Stressed and tired from hiding, Avry is abducted by a band of rogues who, shockingly, value her gift above the golden bounty offered for her capture. Their leader an enigmatic captor-protector with powers of his own is unequivocal in his demands: Avry must heal a plague-stricken prince, the leader of a campaign against her people.
As they traverse the daunting Nine Mountains, beset by mercenaries and magical dangers, Avry must decide who is worth healing and what is worth dying for.
My Review:
Here I am again, having finished a book in two days’ time, and I find myself in any book reader’s worst nightmares: I don’t have the next book in the series. Ugh. I thought I learned my lesson years ago about starting a series without having the available or complete set. Why must I put myself through this suffering? I guess that answer would be the same as to the question ‘Why do I stay up until 3 a.m. to read a book?’ I have a love hate relationship with myself for reasons including these two.
Enough about me, onto the book! This book has been sitting on my mental to read list for the last few months, but I don’t think I’ve ever added it to my Goodreads list until I asked for it for Christmas. I’m happy I got it though, and I really enjoyed reading it!
I like where this book has taken me, how it brought me into a post disease, plague ridden world, one that wasn’t set on the Earth we know. Learning about worlds that aren’t my own somehow makes me even more interested to read the book. Action, awesome girl power, characters you love, some that you might even hate or strongly dislike, and of course, things turning out not the way you wanted.
My favorite part of the book was learning about Avry’s powers, and how her magic works, as well as the almost total elimination of almost all magic welders in this world. Coming in as my second favorite part, just a hair behind the first, is the lilies. Yes I mean flowers, but these lilies aren’t like your average, every day, run of the mill flowers. They are giant, and it’s said that for every 100 peace lilies, there is a death lily. Basically the death lily is like a Venus fly trap, and will engulf anything that comes near it and digest it. That being said, there is no distinct way to tell the difference between these two lilies, so stopping to smell the closest flower could be the last thing you ever do. And I honestly don’t know why I like this aspect so much!
Despite really liking this book, I do have a two things to complain about. First, the events in this book are fast paced, so fast that I’m left slightly confused at what was happening. This book takes span over a couple of months, and the book does a good job of reminding the reader how long we have been with the characters, but it’s almost as if one scene runs into another without much transition. I found this was the case mostly at the beginning, or I just got used to it.
Second, I feel like some of the characters got a little pushed off. We get to know most of them pretty well, but still, I feel like the characters are still just there, and not alive. There’s just a little something missing (something I can’t explain, because I’m not sure exactly what it is) that makes the characters feel just a hair short of three dimensional.
So there you have it! I really liked this book except for something to do with the believability of the characters realness, and the way some events just move right on to the next one.
★★★★
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