Hello everyone!
You know I enjoy a good retelling, don't you? Of course you do, you've seen me gush about it on here plenty of times, and will probably see me do it again in the very near future, not to mention more.
Well, it's a retelling tonight.
What's better is it's a REVERSE retelling, aka the roles of the fantasy tale were telling are going to be reversed for our reading pleasure.
I picked the book up on a whim on BookSirens - you remember, the online service providing free ARCs so you leave reviews on your preferred site of choice for upcoming authors? Yes, that service.
Anyway, I picked it up because it sounded intriguing, and I've always wanted a good representation of Sleeping Beauty. I absolutely got it in this one. Hypathia Rae might be an author worth watching now with this debut novel of hers!
The Witch of Faymeria Wood, ladies and gentlemen.
I have nothing that compares and the author has yet to release a second book so, this is the only one, with no links at the bottom of the page the way they usually are.
Slated as the first of a trilogy, with books one and two ending on cliffhangers (readers, beware!), The Witch of Faymeria Wood tells the story of Prince Silas and chemist Everleigh Hardacher, star-crossed lovers in our tale.
See, the prince is cursed to die on his twentieth birthday, but Everleigh's mother manages to change the death curse into a sleeping one instead, so he falls asleep and will only awaken to true love's kiss. Everleigh's mother then goes on to disappear, leaving her daughter to finish what she started, trying to find a cure for the arrogant prince after his parents declare every eligible maiden in the kingdom MUST kiss their son to try and wake him.
In the end, Everleigh does in fact succeed - by mixing a waking potion with a love potion, and administering it to him through a not-kiss (her words, not mine!).
Silas wakes, sees her, and is struck by the fact she looks nothing like the other citizens of Faymeria. In disclaimer: the people of this kingdom have brown eyes and brown hair. Silas has blue eyes, from his blonde-haired, blue-eyed mother, and Everleigh has red hair and green eyes.
Hunting the chemist down after being stifled crazy within the palace, Silas demands answers and kisses both, but gets neither when he's as high-handed as he begins. However, Everleigh is a healer by nature and someone who wants to help people, so once she brings the prince to heel enough that he starts asking rather than demanding, the two form an uneasy alliance.
What follows is a delightful read of just what Silas was never taught and has no clue about, which is basically the entire real world and how to function in it as a non-royal, and Everleigh learning that he might not be the arrogant asshole she initially thought him to be.
In fact, he feels, and feels deeply, so deeply that she's afraid of the wellspring of emotion he keeps hidden behind the persona of the arrogant prince.
For Silas, spending time with Everleigh is all he never got growing up with his absent parents who pawned him off to the nearest tutor or servant, never to spend time with him, and he clings to the moments with ferocity.
... He also keeps wanting to kiss her, and slowly this develops into more, but neither one of them can be sure whether this desire he feels is genuine or whether it's the potion working through him, though considering the fact said potion was supposed to ONLY make him wish to kiss her, I'd say that Everleigh herself isn't fully aware just what goes on with human emotions.
Together, they explore the facets of the curse as well as her mother's disappearance, starting to believe the two may be connected, and that there's something about Everleigh, who can see Shadow Guards no one else can, for example, that they don't understand.
It doesn't help that Silas' parents are practically useless, his mother a shadow of her former self who has a panic attack each time her son leaves the palace, and neither she nor his father are willing to explain more of the curse, the fact they knew Everleigh's mother, or that they demand to see Everleigh and meet her, before they divulge anything else.
Spoiler alert, my royals: this is wasting time.
Also by reading the mother's journals, it seems to hint that the king was supposed to marry her instead of his current queen first, but fell in love with the other woman. The pair of them came through the Veil, the magical barrier in their kingdom, together, after all.
Things seem to be at a standstill by the time we get the obligatory caught out in the rain scene, but we finally progress to get Everleigh to the castle and the royals ... until we regress again when she jumps to conclusions after a former friend of Silas' and his soldiers drag a carcass of a dragon-like creature into the palace grounds, saying they're waiting to ambush the things so they can harvest their impenetrable scales.
What's that about, you ask?
Well, Silas was originally betrothed to a princess-heiress of a different kingdom, but he was going to break it off just before the curse took him. In the five years since, she hooked up with his best friend and got engaged, then tried to bounce back to Silas once he was awake, to which he's like, thank you next.
This pisses her off, which in turn pisses her fiancé off because she's basically spoon-fed him a bunch of lies, and thinking with the incorrect head he blames Silas for everything. Silas, for his part, explains that he's not going to start a war with a kingdom they're at peace with at the moment just because, but having learned from Everleigh about the scales, makes an off-hand comment about it, which comes to bite him in the ass.
Everleigh runs off in tears and refuses to have anything to do with him anymore, no matter that he shadows her doorstep without pushing his way in, and no matter that the dragon-like baby she'd rescued earlier in the book and her goat Kiva both miss him.
This is where the story ends, and woah, what a cliffhanger!
Having never read anything by Ms Rae before I was pleasantly surprised by just about everything in this story.
Plot: tight, concise, filled with details and enthralling. I love the world woven into the storytelling and can tell the author knows her stuff.
Wordbuilding: as said above, very good. We only really get to know a small corner of it in this first book but I'm confident there's plenty more to come, especially as we know of at least TWO other kingdoms in play.
Main characters: Silas and Everleigh are a match made in the Seven Heavens. Or hells, if you ask her. But they match up perfectly and complement one another well. A large portion of this book is spent with the pair of them getting to know one another, learning from and about each other, and navigating the reality of a post-love potion kiss. (Of course Everleigh forgets two thirds of her own knowledge re: potion but, onwards!) It can occasionally feel a tad slow, but it really shows the natural progression of this romance.
Side characters: continue this jigsaw and all obviously need more exploring. I need to see the showdown between Drylyn and Silas, and the king and queen need to get off their royal tushes and open their mouths.
Magic: not knowingly used, but I suspect Everleigh has to have an actual strain of it since her potions and lotions work so much better than her mother's.
Ending: I admit I started anticipating a cliffhanger by three quarters of the book when nothing actually gets resolved. I'm hoping Everleigh proves to be better than the usual FMC, but we'll have to wait and see!
Overall, this is an intriguing read that takes Sleeping Beauty and turns it onto its head. It also actually shows two people from different social strata adapting and learning, which is often skipped over or overlooked. Silas progresses by leaps and bounds from the prince we meet to the prince we say goodbye to. The writing occasionally does feel modern (with the use of OK and such), but it's concise and conveys what we need to know.
I'm looking forward to the next installment, and hopefully some answers!
Plot: tight, concise, filled with details and enthralling. I love the world woven into the storytelling and can tell the author knows her stuff.
Wordbuilding: as said above, very good. We only really get to know a small corner of it in this first book but I'm confident there's plenty more to come, especially as we know of at least TWO other kingdoms in play.
Main characters: Silas and Everleigh are a match made in the Seven Heavens. Or hells, if you ask her. But they match up perfectly and complement one another well. A large portion of this book is spent with the pair of them getting to know one another, learning from and about each other, and navigating the reality of a post-love potion kiss. (Of course Everleigh forgets two thirds of her own knowledge re: potion but, onwards!) It can occasionally feel a tad slow, but it really shows the natural progression of this romance.
Side characters: continue this jigsaw and all obviously need more exploring. I need to see the showdown between Drylyn and Silas, and the king and queen need to get off their royal tushes and open their mouths.
Magic: not knowingly used, but I suspect Everleigh has to have an actual strain of it since her potions and lotions work so much better than her mother's.
Ending: I admit I started anticipating a cliffhanger by three quarters of the book when nothing actually gets resolved. I'm hoping Everleigh proves to be better than the usual FMC, but we'll have to wait and see!
Overall, this is an intriguing read that takes Sleeping Beauty and turns it onto its head. It also actually shows two people from different social strata adapting and learning, which is often skipped over or overlooked. Silas progresses by leaps and bounds from the prince we meet to the prince we say goodbye to. The writing occasionally does feel modern (with the use of OK and such), but it's concise and conveys what we need to know.
I'm looking forward to the next installment, and hopefully some answers!
10/10 recommend.
xx
*image not mine
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