My friend Hope Ann is releasing her book Shadow of the Hersweald tomorrow. It’s the third book in her fantasy retelling novella series and my favorite so far.
The fact that I enjoyed this one so much shows that I rather like anti-heroes. Because our main character Haydn is certainly an anti-hero. He’s got good intentions and he’s got boundaries, he’s not exactly a bad person, but as he says, “There are some who don’t deserve a pardon.” He’s determined to make sure they don’t get it.
The other characters are equally fascinating and very well developed for the length of the book. In fact the whole story felt much longer than a novella. The plot was very rounded and I got a great sense of this new part of the world.
The Hansel and Gretal aspect of the story became apparent pretty quickly, but it went places I didn’t expect it. I probably should have, but I don’t tend to doubt perfectly nice characters. Anyway siblings are one of my favourite character pairings and this didn’t disappoint.
If you like fairytale re-tellings or Christian fantasy, I highly recommend this. I’m looking forward to see what aspect of this diverse world Hope will bring out next.
About the Book
They would have to come that afternoon. Haydn glared at the rutted road twisted away from the gate beneath him, slithering into the shadows of the Hersweald. And what was the flaming idea behind leaving him in charge? Tregaron in the hands of a criminal… that would put them all in the good graces of the province governor, no questions asked.
A battered soldier from a defeated army, Haydn knows there is only one end to the arrival of the Prince’s governor. Except he hasn’t counted on the Prince himself. Or the pardon which his recent foe has declared to acquit all those who fought against him.
A pardon Haydn detests.
A pardon that refuses to punish the rebels now threatening his own village. And threatening his sister.
Guilt-ridden from his own actions during the war, Haydn knows there are others who have no conscience at all. Others who are using the freedom of the pardon to forward their own desperate schemes.
With enemies closing in on all sides, a pardon that refuses punishment, and nightmares of murder and fire haunting his every thought, will Haydn recognize the truth or will his fear condemn everything he loves to destruction?
Although the history of Aslaria and the conflict between the Prince and the rebel, Tauscher, flow chronologically through the series, each novella in the Legends of Light series is a stand-alone story. Each novella focuses on one of the nine aspects of the Fruit of the Spirit while twisting fairy tales in a clean, exciting, and inspiring manner.
“Open the gates, Dyfed,” Haydn called down. His voice jolted the men to their feet.
They sprang into action under the terse orders of a short figure with muscular arms. The heavy planked gates swung open with protesting groans. The great doors quivered against the earthen walls as the horsemen approached.
Mathias was in the lead. The man’s hair was grayer than last time. Thinner too, perhaps, but his grizzled face, set jaw, and sharp nose belied any change in either strength or personality. His blue eyes never glanced upward as Haydn saluted. But another pair did.
Haydn stared, his arm frozen in mid-motion. Traveon… Where had he come from? Of course, it was expected the governor would bring his son. Some said they’d reconciled during the war. Or maybe it had more to do with the death of Mathias’s wife.
Traveon’s lean face flashed a quick smile and his hand brushed his brown hair in a sharp salute. Haydn’s throat tightened, his breath hissing between compressed lips. He’d braced himself against arrest or judgment before his mother and Gorawen. But Traveon… He bit back an oath. Now they’d be one happy circle of family and old friends.
Haydn blinked and swallowed hard as the last horseman passed through the gates. He gave a quick nod to the men below and the doors squealed shut. Haydn pivoted. His boots clomped down the steps, each thud echoing like a heavy drumbeat.
“Keep watch until Eurof returns,” Haydn ordered over the heavy crash of the bar falling back into place.
About the Author
Hope Ann is a Christian authoress who lives on a small farm in northern Indiana. She was homeschooled and now helps teach several of her eight younger siblings.
She has been writing for over five years and has so many story ideas that she doubts she will ever stop. Her favorite genre to write is high fantasy with a touch of the allegorical. A close second is futuristic suspense. Her goal is to not only entertain with her stories but to provide inspirational fiction for young adults.
Predictably, she loves reading fantasy, fairy tales, mythology, and futuristic suspense. Her favorite authors include J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Dickens, Frank Peretti, Mark Twain, and Serena Chase.
Her hobbies include photography, movie making, knitting, tree climbing, writing e-mails to friends, listening to Celtic music, and collecting shiny trinkets for story inspiration.
Sort of. I'm not exactly attempting Nanowrimo, but I do have goals that involve writing a new book this month. Beginning it that is. I don't know when I'll get to the end.
What are your November plans? Or do you not really make plans and just freewheel madly through life? That can work too sometimes.
More on the plans and what adversely I'm writing is over on my blog.
Random fact: I don't really drink tea, but Taiwan milk tea is a different story. Probably because it's cold and has sugar.
I promise the random lace is relevant. Sort of. There's some mention of sewing in this book?
Yes, I'm making excuses, but the lace had just come in the mail and after I washed it, it was so delightfully messy. It's all ironed now.
As Long As We Live by @cortneymanningauthor is a lovely retelling of Snow White and Rose Red that sadly fell victim to my reading slump. However, it was also the book that helped me get out.
You should read it (probably, I don't want to tell people what to do, especially when it comes to their reading taste.) Of you want to know why you should read it, click the link in my profile to go to my review and find the excuses I have for not having reviewed it already.
Nadine Brandes has a new book coming next year. It's called Wishtress. Not Wishtrees, which is what I first read it about. Tress, like long hair and females, not trees with leaves.
It's been quite a while since I read any of Nadine's books, do I'm excited to see what this one is about.
The lovely graphic was designed by @meganmcculloughbooks
#frostedroses
Happy Book Birthday to Runaway Lyrics by C. O. Bonham.
I have an interview of one of the characters over on my blog (link in profile) asking with directions to the rest of the blog tour. It's probably the character on the corner, but hard to be certain as this book features identical twins.
I can draw and I will now unleash my power across the world!
The power to visualise my costumes before I make them that is. My drawing skills aren't all that awesome, but I've gotten them to a useful level.
Moving on from discuss the troubles with clothing in writing fantasy, I'm now discussing making cosplay. In particular, I'm working on a design for Kyrin Altair from the Ilyon Chronicles.
Link is in my bio, the fact that it's now spring in Australia is not.
I just finished reading Prophet's Apprentice by Cassandra Boyson. I've read a lot of good books and I'm not sure I could call this one spectacular or groundbreaking in anyway, but I just really, really liked it.
It's a solid example of a book that uses fantasy to explore supernatural themes. Sort of a chosen one story, but not about being chosen as a hero to save the kingdom, but as a prophet to do, well, the weird stuff prophets get up to. Wyn doesn't really know what she's doing it why she's been chosen.
The characters are fun. Wynn is super capable, except when it comes to most prophet matters, Phillip keeps tripping over his own feet and the prophet is a nutter who adores Wynn, is both wise and child-like, and does everything the great one asks of him without being perfect.
It was a good book and I'm definitely planning to read more by Cassandra Boyson.
Today I've got another reimagined fairytale (there might be a theme of me not liking my retellings to be straightforward)
K. M. Shea's Snow Queen books (Heart of Ice, Sacrifice, and the short story collection Snowflakes) have a lot of elements of the original Hans Christian Andersen tale, but they're all spun into an epic fantasy romance. Lots of themes of courage, love and redemption and wonderful characters. The books have a lot of feeling, but a good dose of humour too and plenty of depth to the plots.
I don't really want to make comparisons to Frozen, but there's an element or three that I strongly suspect were inspired by that. The snow Queen is a princess with ice powers who got exiled to an ice castle in the mountains and she's not evil: That's in there. Some sort of moose/elk creature: Actually has nothing to do with Frozen. That's really about the extent of the overlap. Heart of Ice certainly doesn't feel like a Disney movie.
These books are linked to K. M. Shea's Timeless Fairy Tales and Fairy Tale Enchantress series, but they stand alone very well.
(All images are versions of the book covers and belong to K. M. Shea)
Today it's two books for the price of… well, the price is none of my business. I won The Ryn and The Remedy by @serena_chase in a Talk Like a Pirate Day giveaway many years ago and they are gorgeous books.
The books, well mostly the first one, contain so many elements from the tale of Snow White and Rose Red without taking much from the plot at all. This is a quest story with adventure, disguises, ancient evils and plenty of royals and nobles. The world building is magnificent, the allegorical elements aren't bad and the prophecies are of the long, detailed kind instead of the vague kind if that matters to you.
Unlike the emphasis of the original tale, this isn't really a story about sisters and their mother, but it does have family and romance. Pirates too.
There's magic, but only a small amount, telepathy which is something I love, and heroic and interesting characters. (sometimes they're both)
For anyone who might be confused, Snow White and Rose Red is a completely different tale from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, though it does have a dwarf of its own.
For other retellings of the tale, keep an eye out for the Frosted Roses Challenge books coming out next month. There's going to be a lot of good books.
The Entwined Tales series is extremely humourous, making fun of a bunch of fairytale tropes. This poor family has the most unhelpful fairy-godfather who has no interest in listening to what they actually want and generally makes things worse with my magical gifts.
Melanie Cellier's book in the series is what introduces me to her as an author and is at least as good as her later books. An Inconvenient Princess is funny, features twins, and doesn't approach the story of Rapunzel in at all a conventional way. It's been a while, but I can recall enough to know neither of the twins is a princess.
Honourable mention to Misfortune by Kendra E. Ardnek. It manages to merge Rapunzel with the apocryphal story of Daniel and the Dragon and sticking Rapunzel in a Ziggurat is a great idea. (also, any books released in the Golden Braids challenge that Kendra hosted are also wonderful. Mechanical Heart by Sarah Pennington and The Dragon's Flower by Wyn Estelle Owens. So good!)
Thank you for taking part in my blog tour!
Oh it was fun. I have to put something on my blog after all and I didn't have crazy formatting issues with this.