Have you read a book so powerful that it demands to be felt, that makes you feel like the author has left you too soon and as they leave, they take a part of yourself with them?
I have. More than one book actually.
After my encounter with John Green’s the Fault in our Stars, I was left devastated for a few days. My heart didn’t want to pick up another book just yet because somehow, it felt like cheating.
If you have read such books that refused to leave you long after you closed the last pages, you are lucky.
Recently, I encountered another book just like that.
Or perhaps I should say, a trilogy.
During my high school years, our prescribed novel was Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi, an Australian author who has won many literary awards in her fiction writings. One day long ago, perhaps five or six years past, I was at Changi Airport, fishing for a new book to read. I came across this: Finnikin of the Rock.
I recognised the author’s name and as the book sounded like fantasy, I bought it.
Although it took me another year or two until I finally read it, I knew I was hooked.
Three weeks ago, I discovered that it was actually the first book of Lumatere Chronicles. You could imagine how happy I was upon knowing the news.
I downloaded the other two books on my iPad and began reading soon.
When I finished, I almost felt remorse. I still wanted more.
The story had every element of fantasy inside it – kings, queens, cursed kingdom, scholars, priests, gods and godesses. It is a story of triumph, of love, and one of hope. It was a dark tale but a lovely one. A sad one, but a beautiful one indeed. It is full of twists that you feel proud of guessing right and of shocks as you don’t see them coming.
And I love every part of it.
If you love fantasy genre, I highly recommend this chronicles. If you dont love fantasy genre, give it a try.
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Book One
“Be prepared for the worst, my love, for it lives next door to the best.”
At the age of nine, Finnikin is warned by the gods that he must sacrifice a pound of flesh in order to save the royal house of his homeland, Lumatere. And so he stands on the rock of three wonders with his childhood friend Prince Balthazar and the prince’s cousin, Lucian, and together they mix their blood. And Lumatere is safe.
Until the ‘five days of the unspeakable’, when the King and Queen and their children are slaughtered in the palace. And an imposter king takes the throne. And a curse is put on Lumatere, which traps those caught inside and forces thousands of others to roam the land as exiles, dying of fever and persecution in foreign camps.
But ten years later Finnikin is led to another rock to meet the young novice, Evanjalin. A girl plagued by dark dreams, who holds the key to their return to the Land of light...
Book Two
…Blood sings to blood….those born last will make the first and Charyn will be barren no more
Three years after the curse on Lumatere was lifted, Froi has found his home … or so he believes. Fiercely loyal to the Queen and Finnikin, Froi has been taken roughly and lovingly in hand by the Guard sworn to protect the royal family, and has learned to control his quick temper with a warrior’s discipline. But when he is sent on a secretive mission to the kingdom of Charyn, nothing could have prepared him for what he finds in its surreal royal court. Soon he must unravel both the dark bonds of kinship and the mysteries of a half-mad princess in this barren and mysterious place. It is in Charyn that he will discover there is a song sleeping in his blood … and though Froi would rather not, the time has come to listen.
Book Three
There’s a babe in my belly that whisper the valley, Froi, I follow the whispers and come to the road….
Separated from the girl he loves and has sworn to protect Froi must travel through Charyn to search for Quintana, the mother of Charyn’s unborn king, and protect her against those who will do anything to gain power. But what happens when loyalty to family and country conflict. When the forces marshalled in Charyn’s war gather and threatens to involve the whole of the land, including Lumatere, only Froi can set things right, with the help of those he loves….
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