Link :Amazon, Goodreads. Price: £6.99
Sascha Riggs has vivid, prophetic dreams that she turns into beautiful, haunting paintings. These paintings lead her to Corfu, where she meets the heroes from her dreams and with them must face down an evil sorceress on a quest to recover and protect the Stars of Fortune.
Okay, so the first thing you may notice is that my description of this book doesn’t sound very much like a romance novel. The prologue is pure fairy tale – three good fairies bless a future queen, then an evil witch shows to mess it all up. Afterwards, well, if you’d called Sascha, “Sascharia”, and made Corfu “Corfudania” then this could easily be a high fantasy novel. It hits similar beats – chosen one, prophesised romance with lovers who fall instantly in love, a pure battle of good versus evil where the heroes face threats but never really get hurt. Seriously, David Eddings could have written this with a different cover and nobody would have noticed.
The main love thread is between Sascha and the Irish Magician Bran, who is utterly charming, brave, and kind. If it sounds like I was criticising the book for following high fantasy beats I should emphasise: the romance between these two is lovely and fits very well into the fantasy setting. Once I’d got my head round the idea that this was high fantasy wrapped in a contemporary setting the central romance pulled the whole story along and made this a very enjoyable read.
So, if you’re prepared to step a bit out there; if you like your fantasy a little more lusty (there is plenty of sexual content but the description tends towards lyrical rather than anatomical, which fits the style); if you want a fantasy story with love and friendship placed squarely at the centre, and good vs evil clearly delineated, try this out. This is book one of a trilogy, all of which are now available.
