The Half King
The epic, spellbinding and dark fantasy romance
-
-
3.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $15.99
Publisher Description
In a world where birth order determines your fate, what if everything you believed about yourself was a lie?
Like all second-born daughters of the realm, Cerise Solon has never ventured beyond the temple grounds where she lives in service to the goddess. But unlike her peers, Cerise is a complete failure as an oracle. Her inability to foretell a single tragedy has brought shame upon her family, something she sees reflected in their eyes during their rare visits. Everything changes when the head seer offers Cerise an opportunity to serve the Half King—a young man who rules by day and turns to shadow at sunset.
As a firstborn son, the king bears his bloodline’s curse, destined to vanish completely upon his twenty-first birthday. While searching for a way to restore him, Cerise finds a kindred spirit in the mysterious young ruler, and with his help discovers a startling revelation about herself that unlocks a powerful set of gifts. But the truth comes with a price. For she is no oracle, but instead the product of a union so forbidden its discovery would sentence her to death.
Despite her tainted origins, Cerise might be the key to restoring order to the land and saving the man she’s quickly growing to love...if she can outlive those sworn to destroy her.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Landers (Starfall) brings a mythic fairy tale aesthetic to this new adult romantasy, crafting a complex world and vivid characters. A thousand years ago, the heads of the noble families of the Allied Realm performed the Great Betrayal, a failed attempt to kill the goddess Shiera, which left each of their first-born descendants with an inherited curse. Now second-born Cerise, an acolyte of the goddess Solon whose expected gift of seership has so far failed to manifest, is sent to serve as emissary to King Kian Mortara. Kian's bloodline curse causes him to disappear each night, and the curse is progressing to where he will soon vanish entirely—and without leaving an heir. As Cerise befriends the other important residents of the castle, digs into the previous emissary's coded journal, and seeks to understand her fated part in an epic quest to break the curses, a sweet love blossoms between her and the doomed Half King. The heavy metaphysical worldbuilding emerges fairly organically, but readers will wish for a more in-depth exploration of the political, social, and religious conditions of this war-torn land. Fortunately, a sequel seems to be in the cards. Readers will be eager for its arrival.
