Dreamer's Pool

Juliet Marillier

Nov 2014 · Blackthorn & Grim Book 1 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

Award-winning author Juliet Marillier “weaves magic, mythology, and folklore into every sentence on the page” (The Book Smugglers). Now she presents the first novel in an enchanting series that will transport readers to a magical vision of ancient Ireland....
 
In exchange for help escaping her long and wrongful imprisonment, embittered magical healer Blackthorn has vowed to set aside her bid for vengeance against the man who destroyed all that she once held dear. Followed by a former prison mate, a silent hulk of a man named Grim, she travels north to Dalriada. There she’ll live on the fringe of a mysterious forest, duty bound for seven years to assist anyone who asks for her help.
 
Oran, crown prince of Dalriada, has waited anxiously for the arrival of his future bride, Lady Flidais. He knows her only from a portrait and sweetly poetic correspondence that have convinced him Flidais is his destined true love. But Oran discovers letters can lie. For although his intended exactly resembles her portrait, her brutality upon arrival proves she is nothing like the sensitive woman of the letters.
 
With the strategic marriage imminent, Oran sees no way out of his dilemma. Word has spread that Blackthorn possesses a remarkable gift for solving knotty problems, so the prince asks her for help. To save Oran from his treacherous nuptials, Blackthorn and Grim will need all their resources: courage, ingenuity, leaps of deduction, and more than a little magic.
 

Ratings and reviews

Ms. Marillier's story-telling once again at its best, as she begins yet another enchanting story filled with love and loss, the depths of despair and soaring with joy, the fey & uncanny as well as the all-too-human failings, trappings, and cacaphony of feelings, stregnths, and weaknesses that weave together just what it means to be a person, and what it means to be part of what links us all together as mankind. This is the beginning of another of the author's series of novels, based on the Ireland of old, with history, mythology, folklore, the fey, and the old pathways of the Celtic Wise Women.

Really enjoyed this book from the very start. The plot twists are more like a slow development of the story, but I like that and absolutely love these characters

About the author

Juliet Marillier was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, a town with strong Scottish roots. She graduated from the University of Otago with degrees in languages and music, and has had a varied career that includes teaching and performing music as well as working in government agencies. Juliet now lives in a hundred-year-old cottage near the river in Perth, Western Australia, where she writes full-time. She is a member of the druid order OBOD. Juliet shares her home with two dogs and a cat. Juliet's historical fantasy novels are published internationally and have won a number of awards.