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From the Publisher
Praise for Chaz Brenchley:
'The atmosphere is so well described you can almost taste it' STARBURST
'The prose is beautifully crafted and a joy to read' NORTHERN REVIEW
'Intense . . . compelling reading' LOCUS
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Customer Reviews
It's a gripping narrative, which starts where Feast of the King's Evil left off, with Julianne missing, kidnapped on her wedding night. Chaz Brenchley doesn't make things easy on his characters, and they have plenty to endure - warfare, divided loyalties, magical interventions and more! - before they reach the King's own city of Ascariel.
New readers should start at the beginning, with Tower of the King's Daughter: admittedly, I'm biaised, but when I reached the end, I went back and read all three books again, enjoying seeing how it all fitted together!
Unbeknownst to our party of heroes, other men are working their way to the borders of Surayon. Imber, Julianne's first husband, follows the call of a djinni to come, he hopes, to the aid of the bride he lost so precipitously; Sieur Anton d'Escrivey, whom we last met mourning the loss of the young Marron (with whom he enjoyed a most controversial of relationships) amidst a veritable sea of dead men on the grounds of Roc de Rancon, heads in the same direction amidst an army of Knights' Ransomers seeking to locate and lay waste to the hidden land of Surayon and its heretical people; a new character also follows a path to the same destination, a Preacher who heals the sick with a holy relic and leads a peasant army of the zombie-like benefactors of his healing magic on a quest to seek divine retribution against Surayon. As the book ends, the Folded Land is revealed to those around it for the first time in forty years, and the fate of this land and of the characters we have so faithfully followed throughout their journey to this time and place now hangs in the balance. The only certainty seems to be that war will come, that the army of the Sharai will battle the forces of Outremer, and that blood will fill the streets of the now-revealed Surayon.
The entire Outremer series is powerfully character-driven, and war itself will not change this fact. The primary characters have changed a great deal over the course of the first five novels, and my own reactions to them have shifted back and forth between admiration and disappointment, compassion and disgust, great sympathy and ambivalence. Still, they remain fascinating, particularly Marron the reluctant Ghost Walker and the mysterious Elisande. I no longer care very much for the histrionic and willful Julianne, but I am most anxious to see what becomes of everyone else. The potential reuniting of Marron and d'Escrivey will be particularly interesting to see (if it does indeed happen), especially inasmuch as Marron's loyal friend Jemel has sworn to kill d'Escrivey. I have some real problems with some of the actions of just about every character contained in these pages, yet Brenchley's writing will not let me abandon them nor let me rest until I know what becomes of them all.
Those of the desert have a more pressing concern -- finding and rescuing Julianne, who was abducted on her wedding night. They follow the trail to a trade city on the border between Outremer and the lands of the Sharai.
That's her second wedding night. She ran away from her first husband on her first wedding night, hating to leave him but following a more urgent promise. Imber hasn't giving up hope of finding her, and joins a march to the trade City in search of the coming war.
Then there's the mysterious preacher and his flock of the not-quite-healed; an army, perhaps, for someone who chooses to use it that way.
And they're all aimed at Surayon, with one tiny and personal battle near the end of this volume paving the way for a much larger battle in the next and final volume of the series.
This is only the first half of what was originally published in the UK as a single volume, but stands well on its own as a prelude to the final twisting together of the various plot strands that have been laid out over the course of the series. Even now it is impossible to predict how events will play out and whether any of the characters will find what they desire. It's beautifully written, as ever, and shows us still more of the characters and their world.
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