Imrhien has now recovered both face and voice, but her journey is far from over. Convinced that she is being followed, she changes her name to Rohain, disguising herself as a lady from a far isle in order to journey to the court of the King-Emperor, where she will reveal the secret of the treasure under the Waterstair. At Caermelor she meets two very special people...Duke of Roxburgh, chief of the Dainnan and her own beloved Thorn, and Thomas, Duke of Ercildoune, known as Thomas the Rhymer. She eventually leads them to the treasure, but her reward is not the one she seeks...she wishes with all her might to see Thorn once more. As she travels, attacks by unseelie forces grow, finally convincing her that for some reason they are after her. Who has she angered so much? Why do the unseelie want her? The secret must be in her memory, but it will take a much longer journey to discover the truth of it all.
Two of the things that twines throughout these books are stories and songs. The tales are almost always about some aspect of the fae or wights...stories of mischief, horror and the strange harsh judgments of the Faeren kind. These stories do more than tell some interesting tale, they give us important information that will bear great importance later, and set the atmospheric tone of the book. These stories tend to involve us all the more deeply in the main tale, giving the books an older, mythic feel. The story of Rohain has the feel of all the old stories, that sort of magic, mystical aura that makes you almost think that it could have happened, just as Thomas the Rhymer could have been abducted by the Queen of the Fae.
Another thing that makes this story hard to put down is the love between Thorn and Rohain...in my last review, I described how lovely he is, and the fact that (Id put in a spoiler warning, but, well, this whole review is a spoiler of the last book I suppose) he kisses her before she is healed makes the romance sweeter. He accepts her before she becomes beautiful...though, as in all of the old folk tales when a man kisses an ugly woman, (or, to be fair, and vice-versa) he is often rewarded by her shedding her heinous nature and becoming as lovely as a rainbow. Perhaps this is an allegory on love, usually, that love paints the ugliest face beautiful, but in Rohains case the action is more literal. The person she becomes is astonishingly beguiling, but as her healer warns her when Rohain would thank her, being beautiful might be an even greater burden than being deformed. Back to what I was saying about the romance: I find myself reading faster...I read well into the night once, promising myself Id go to bed once Rohain and Thorn got back together, and it was so sweet that I kept reading after that. It adds to the magical aura of the book just as much as the other aspects.
Well, there is one more book to go. Ive read it, and I cant wait to tell you all about it, so on to the next review! That is...if youve read these two books.
5 out of 5 sildron
Cindy Lynn Speer, GWN Reviewer
May 5, 2003
