A Dance with Fate
-
-
4.5 • 2 Ratings
-
-
- $7.99
Publisher Description
A young woman who is both a bard--and a warrior--seeks to repay her debts and settle scores in this thrilling historical fantasy series.
The young warrior and bard Liobhan has lost her brother to the Otherworld. Even more determined to gain a place as an elite fighter, she returns to Swan Island to continue her training. But Liobhan is devastated when her comrade Dau is injured and loses his sight in their final display bout. Blamed by Dau's family for the accident, she agrees to go to Dau's home as a bond servant for the span of one year.
There, she soon learns that Oakhill is a place of dark secrets. The vicious Crow Folk still threaten both worlds. And Dau, battling the demon of despair, is not an easy man to help.
When Liobhan and Dau start to expose the rot at the center of Oakhill, they place themselves in deadly danger. For their enemy wields great power and will stop at nothing to get his way. It will take all the skills of a Swan Island warrior and a touch of the uncanny to give them a hope of survival. . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The lovely second mythic fantasy in Marillier's Irish folklore inspired Warrior Bards series (after The Harp of Kings) chronicles the youthful romance of Swan Island warriors Liobhan, a talented singer, and Dau, the embittered son of a chieftain. Evenly matched in combat skills, Liobhan and Dau celebrate the completion of their strenuous training as spies with a three-round display bout that goes horribly wrong when Dau slips and is blinded. Under interclan law, the injured Dau must return to his father's home, Oakhill, where his older brothers once cruelly tormented him. The only comfort keeping Dau from a fatal depression is Liobhan, who volunteers to spend a year at Oakhill to care for him. Despite expectations set by the first book in the series, very little music or warrior training leavens their unhappy lives at Oakhill, until fate intervenes in the person of Liobhan's bardic brother Brocc, who returns from the Otherworld to save them from their misery. Marillier's strength lies in her ability to convincingly convey the genuine trust and compassion between her characters as they come of age in a magical land. Series readers will eagerly await more.
