by Intisar Khanani
Published May 25th 2012 by Intisar Khanani
Princess Alyrra’s strength lies in silence. Scorned by her family, she avoids the court, spending her time with servants. When her marriage is unexpectedly arranged with the prince of a powerful neighboring kingdom, Alyrra feels trapped. As the court celebrates her match, dark rumors spread about the unexplained deaths of the women of her new family. Alyrra begins her journey with mounting trepidation; betrayed while traveling, she seizes an opportunity to start a life away from court.
Walking away from a prince whom she doesn’t know should have been easy. But from the moment she sets eyes on him, Alyrra realizes that her freedom could cost him his life. Without any magical defense of her own, she is plunged into a lethal game of sorcery and deceit. Now Alyrra must decide whom she can trust and what she’s willing to fight for—before her silence proves fatal.
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Publication Date: May 25th 2012
Publisher: Intisar Khanani
Format: e-book, 264 pages
Series: no
Source: Review copy from author
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* I received an e-copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.*
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My Review
Princess Alyrra is not sure why the King from a much bigger Kingdom has arrived to her family's castle. She's much too busy most of the time, what with trying to escape from her brother's violence and avoiding her mother's coldness and pretty much any other member of the court, all of which seem to hate her. So she simply assumed the King was there for some political reason. And, as she quickly finds out, he technically is... but it involves her. She is to marry his son, a man she has never seen before, and is said to be cold and mean. But Alyrra has little choice in the matter. And, really, how worse can her life be from the one she already has?
Alyrra is sad to part with her beloved horse, Fleet Wind, and the servants of the palace, the only ones who treated her like a friend. She will also miss her invisible friend, the one who has always been there to listen and comfort her, ever since she was but a child. Her friend, The Wind.
Shortly before leaving, Alyrra receives a strange visit in her room. A man appears out of the shadows, wanting to speak to her and warn her of the incoming trip. Before he can say much more, a scary woman, a witch, breaks into her room, too. She calls herself The Lady, and seems to have evil plans concerning both Alyrra and the strange man. The intruders disappear as quickly as they have come, and Alyrra is left alone, confused by it all. When she tell her mother about it, she crafts a blood spell, binding Alyrra's strength to it, suposedly to protect her from The Lady. Her mother also tells her that a companion will travel with her, a noblewoman, Valka, who hates Alyrra. Her brother gifts her with a beautiful white horse, seemly unbreakable and untamable, most likely in the hope that she tries to ride it and hurts herself while doing it, she muses.
On the trip to the new Kingdom, Alyrra tries to free the white horse, speaking softly to it while doing so. Valka tricks Alyrra into drinking from a lake, and The Lady surges out of the water and overpowers the princess. She uses the spell Alyrra's mother made (and warned her to carry around with her) to make an even bigger spell. The Lady transfers Alyrra's soul into Valka's body and vice versa. The witch also puts a magic choker around the princess/Valka's throat, to keep her form speaking about the exchange to anyone.
Now the princess is imprisoned inside Valka's body, and at the mercy of the power the woman inside her old body now holds. Alyrra, who could not stand being called Valka, names herself Thorn and starts to accept the situation as an oportunity to start a new life, away from court. She becomes a goose girl. WIth the help of the magic white horse, Falada, who returns after being freed, Thorn will make powerful friends and just as powerful enemies, all who will be very important characters in this fantastic tale, filled with pain, betrayal, trust and magic.
This book is a retelling of the fairytale "Goose Girl", one I wasn't familiar with, but that Wikipedia quickly explained. I found Thorn to be incredibly faithful to the original story.
I enjoyed this book much more than I expected to. It was very engrossing, and I read it very quickly. Alyrra was an interesting character, and so were the -many- other secondary ones. Intisar Khanani has a very good way with words and a very fertile imagination, LOL. So fertile that this book was almost too much. It had a lot to the plot. A lot. The book mentions too much and explains too little. It made the story quite unpredictable, because I was never sure what would be introduced next... and there was so much to cover, that the ending was very... dull. We don't see how Alyrra makes her family regret mistreating her. We don't see how she changes the laws to stop those terrible crimes from going unpunished. We don't even see her grow very much. She continues to be as she was when the book started: easily swayed and almost incapable of making decisions by herself. She makes some good choices, sure, but only after being driven into making those decisions. That was a bit of a let down.
Also, I don't see how or when exactly she fell for the prince. I mean, I see how he fell for her, but nothing pointed towards the existence of her feelings for him. I was expecting her to fall for pretty much anyone. The lead Thief. One of the stable boys. The chief of the Prince's Guard. But not for the prince... but then again, the focus of this book is adventure and fantasy, not really romance. I also wasn't expecting so many deaths in a YA book...but they did fit in very well.
Anyway, even with the small things that did bother me, it was still a very enjoyable read! One that I recommend. ;) It was an excellent first book, and I'll be sure to look out for the next ones by this new author.
Alyrra is sad to part with her beloved horse, Fleet Wind, and the servants of the palace, the only ones who treated her like a friend. She will also miss her invisible friend, the one who has always been there to listen and comfort her, ever since she was but a child. Her friend, The Wind.
Shortly before leaving, Alyrra receives a strange visit in her room. A man appears out of the shadows, wanting to speak to her and warn her of the incoming trip. Before he can say much more, a scary woman, a witch, breaks into her room, too. She calls herself The Lady, and seems to have evil plans concerning both Alyrra and the strange man. The intruders disappear as quickly as they have come, and Alyrra is left alone, confused by it all. When she tell her mother about it, she crafts a blood spell, binding Alyrra's strength to it, suposedly to protect her from The Lady. Her mother also tells her that a companion will travel with her, a noblewoman, Valka, who hates Alyrra. Her brother gifts her with a beautiful white horse, seemly unbreakable and untamable, most likely in the hope that she tries to ride it and hurts herself while doing it, she muses.
On the trip to the new Kingdom, Alyrra tries to free the white horse, speaking softly to it while doing so. Valka tricks Alyrra into drinking from a lake, and The Lady surges out of the water and overpowers the princess. She uses the spell Alyrra's mother made (and warned her to carry around with her) to make an even bigger spell. The Lady transfers Alyrra's soul into Valka's body and vice versa. The witch also puts a magic choker around the princess/Valka's throat, to keep her form speaking about the exchange to anyone.
Now the princess is imprisoned inside Valka's body, and at the mercy of the power the woman inside her old body now holds. Alyrra, who could not stand being called Valka, names herself Thorn and starts to accept the situation as an oportunity to start a new life, away from court. She becomes a goose girl. WIth the help of the magic white horse, Falada, who returns after being freed, Thorn will make powerful friends and just as powerful enemies, all who will be very important characters in this fantastic tale, filled with pain, betrayal, trust and magic.
This book is a retelling of the fairytale "Goose Girl", one I wasn't familiar with, but that Wikipedia quickly explained. I found Thorn to be incredibly faithful to the original story.
I enjoyed this book much more than I expected to. It was very engrossing, and I read it very quickly. Alyrra was an interesting character, and so were the -many- other secondary ones. Intisar Khanani has a very good way with words and a very fertile imagination, LOL. So fertile that this book was almost too much. It had a lot to the plot. A lot. The book mentions too much and explains too little. It made the story quite unpredictable, because I was never sure what would be introduced next... and there was so much to cover, that the ending was very... dull. We don't see how Alyrra makes her family regret mistreating her. We don't see how she changes the laws to stop those terrible crimes from going unpunished. We don't even see her grow very much. She continues to be as she was when the book started: easily swayed and almost incapable of making decisions by herself. She makes some good choices, sure, but only after being driven into making those decisions. That was a bit of a let down.
Also, I don't see how or when exactly she fell for the prince. I mean, I see how he fell for her, but nothing pointed towards the existence of her feelings for him. I was expecting her to fall for pretty much anyone. The lead Thief. One of the stable boys. The chief of the Prince's Guard. But not for the prince... but then again, the focus of this book is adventure and fantasy, not really romance. I also wasn't expecting so many deaths in a YA book...but they did fit in very well.
Anyway, even with the small things that did bother me, it was still a very enjoyable read! One that I recommend. ;) It was an excellent first book, and I'll be sure to look out for the next ones by this new author.
* I received an e-copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.*
