Son of the Shadows: Book 2 (The Sevenwaters Trilogy) - Softcover

Marillier, Juliet

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006486045 ISBN 13: 9780006486046

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2002

Synopsis

A powerful and entracing romance, set in the Celtic twilight of 10th century Ireland: a new MISTS OF AVALON for readers of historical fantasy.

The forests of Sevenwaters have cast their spell over Sorcha's daughter Liadan, who, like her mother, has inherited the talent to heal and to see into the spirit world. The forest spirits warn Liadan that she must remain for ever at Sevenwaters if the sacred isles are to be won back from the Britons who took them by force. For the Lord and Lady of the forest spirits have seen in Liadan's future a doomed romance, death; a child; and a terrible choice to be made.

Liadan is taken captive by the Painted Man, who is revealed to be a man quite unlike his legend. Liadan is drawn to him, despite the ancient prophesy of doom, but can she reclaim her life and defy the spirits, or will a curse fall upon Sevenwaters because of her forbidden love? Will the fight for the sacred isles end in tragedy? History and fantasy, myth and magic, legend and love come together in this magical story.

About this title

Review:

Second of the Sevenwaters trilogy of novels about the last days of heroic Ireland, Son of the Shadows takes up the story of the children of Sorcha, who saved her brothers whom a sorceress had enchanted into swans, and Hugh, the Briton she married. Her daughter Liadan is a gifted seer and healer who thinks, in spite of her visions, that she knows what the future has in store for her--caring for her dying mother and then an alliance marriage to Eamonn. A chance meeting on the road carries her off to care for a dying man--one of the mercenaries of the sinister Painted Man, Eamonn's arch-enemy and a killer for hire. Liadan discovers that she cannot choose where she loves and that she and the Painted Man are as bound up in destiny as her mother and father were before her.

This is an intelligent historical romance in which the supernatural is a part of the character's everyday lives to an extent that makes it hard to think of the book as specifically a fantasy--these are people to whom the beings of forest speak on a regular basis and to whom sorcery is real. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

‘I enjoyed it enormously. It is a fantasy, full of the magic of the Celtic night, but it has that wonderful all-important feel of reality... a wonderful, riveting story’ Barbara Erskine
‘This hugely enjoyable, romantic Celtic fantasy is a terrific book, well written and unputdownable’ Bookwatch
‘Filled with the powers of earth and sky, lake and forest... sweet and strong as the note of a harp, and painful as a sword thrust deep... a strong sense of realism... a nicely wrought and well-detailed historical fantasy’ Locus

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0006486045
• ISBN 13: 9780006486046
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 672