I ended up putting this book into the “Fantasy” category because while there is a romance in it, the world-building takes centre stage.
Main character Kera goes missing as a child. Months later she reappears with no memory of what happened to her and returns to her peaceful life in her families village.
But the peace doesn’t last long. Her country is conquered by a King who establishes a new religious order and the people are subject to new laws and violent enforcement. The King’s soldiers and judge, jury, and executioner and resistance is punished by wholesale slaughter.
Kera longs to fight back. And gradually, she discovers she can.
This book is a tribute to feminine rage. Kera and her friends experience almost all the ways that people – especially women – can be brutalised. They experience the violence of war, the treatment of refugees, the commodification of other human beings by men in a position of power, even the way so many ordinary men treat the women in their lives as a means to and end.
This is a dark book, and very much a mirror held up to the world we live in. But like our world, there are points of light – the loyalty of friends who will do anything to protect each other. The ordinary people who go out of their way to help with small gestures that make all the difference. Those are the things that keep Kera going and give her the strength and determination to fight back. And in the process she discovers just how powerful she really is.
If you have ever been hurt, have ever been powerless, have ever felt rage flooding your system until you wanted nothing more than to just burn – this is the book for you.