The people of the Seven Demesnes live in unease. Every generation, seven sons are born to rule their seven walled cities. Without them, mankind is fated to fall.Now, something is killing them before they can be born.***When Iminique Demascus senses a nameless evil striking at the unborn royal children, she has to make a choice. A noblewoman and a healer in a world where aristocrats and mages … aristocrats and mages belong to different castes, she is forbidden by her father to ever heal. Breaking his dictate, she saves a single girl child.
No one thanks her. Neither the child’s parents nor the people want a girl, reviling her for surviving when the males perished. Left as the princess’s sole protector and faced with adversity and hostility from nearly every quarter, Iminique allies herself with the wizard who once dragged her to the brink of death and then inexplicably let her go; a wizard who has his own secret agenda and casts spells that should be impossible.
Meanwhile, in the south, a young sorceress falls prey to an ancient enemy, one weaving his own plans for bringing mankind to its knees.
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Take the gritty historial-inspired fantasy of A Game of Thrones and the more female-centric courtly politics of Philippa Gregory, add in a dash of the magical and complex protagonists a la Karen Miller’s Empress and you would have something like this. Only shorter. Considering that this is only a stepping stone into the world of the Seven Cities, the scope of it is mind-boggling. This is a case of indie-fiction at it’s best.
I don’t know if I have the words to describe how epic a story this is. It may be a tome in length, but do not be deterred – every page, every word is important, not to mention exquisitely, painfully, terribly beautiful. There’s something lyrical to the writing that draws you in to this unusual fantasy world and the tangled web of lives lived by the cast of complicated ladies.
Within the First Demesne of the Seven Cities lives a noble girl by the name of Iminique. At 13, her father is already planning on marrying her off to a vile man who will ensure that her gift of healing magic is taken from her. The mage caste are lower in society, and for the daughter of a noble to have inherited power would bring shame upon them both. Yet in secret Iminique has been practicing her magic. She is present on the night the queen is to give birth – not to the prophesied septuplets she so desires to bear, but to twins. Iminique senses a dark magic strangling the lives of the newborns, and uses her untried powers to save one of the children. She’s then pressed into service by the magnate, becoming the girl-child’s nursemaid. Tried by courtly intrigues and tested to her limits by the magnate’s wizard Quentyn’s games, Iminique must navigate a world she barely understands to save a princess no-one wants. As the years pass things slowly change, enemies and friends blurring into greyness, but still danger lurks in every shadow and every whispered word.
And still the rest of the world moves apace. On the furthest edge of the Seventh Demesne, a young mage named Zara finds there is more she wants from life than a safe marriage and a secured magical bloodline. She longs for something darker, dangerous, forbidden…
There’s no way to sum up this book adequately without dropping spoilers. Honestly, the tangled stories drifting and converging creates such a feeling of creeping dread, and yet still I couldn’t put this book down. It’s eerie how each character’s thread pulls you in before switching out to another perspective.
And those characters are amazing. They are deep and difficult, flawed and full of life. There’s no cliched “strong female” here, although the words do well to describe each of the POVs we experience. Think Sansa Stark or Cersei Lannister; tough, capable of cunning, strength and drive, but also of great weakness and failures as they strive for what they want. Iminique is a remarkably strong teenage girl, defiant in the face of the cruel people surrounding her and yet still mindful of her father’s wishes and standing even when it goes against everything she holds dear. Her push and pull relationship with Quentyn over the years is both beautiful and terrible to behold. Zara’s turn feels a gut-blow, her whole existence defined by her struggle to decide between what she wants and what she knows is right. Later voices, like Thorn and Seriah are just as nuanced and full of sweet suffering.
Now would I call any of this book romance? Yes… And no. More like Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance than anything else, each relationship has so many layers of love and longing and loathing it’s a simmering brew of tension. You want to shy away from it, you want to shake the girls by the shoulders and shout at them, you want so badly to understand who is seducing who… Yes, it’s probably under the “difficult to read” category, given that the idea of consent is sometimes questionable, but the quality of the writing makes sure it’s nothing tawdry. Love and lust are so much more than just words when they’re implied in the way this book achieves.
There are some other tiny little nit-pick issues. Young characters can seem incredibly mature and wily for their age. Occasional modern parlance slips in which can seem out of place (in a land where “jagging” is a curse, dropping the f-word is as strange as a noble lady saying butt/bum).
And the ending. It’s a little bit abrupt considering all that’s happened… but also that it had to end at all. As a sort-of-prequel, it’s only the start of a supremely ambitious story arc set to span lifetimes.
Basically, it’s an indie gem. The complexity, the subtlety, the sheer scale of the thing as darkness builds… And yet it’s still a quiet story, closely centred on a few female characters within their tiny corners of the realm. It’s billed as a prequel, which it is of sorts, but one that is required reading. It sets in motion so many things that you know are going to spell trouble across the ages, just from insignificant little acts of love and hate and rebellion.
This promises to be quite the saga, and it’s one I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to those looking for something deep and dark and meaningful in their fantasy reads.
-I won a copy of this ebook in a giveaway run by the author. This does not affect my review-