Crown Duel
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5.0 • 5 Ratings
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
Sherwood Smith's most popular young adult fantasy begins with Meliara and her brother vowing to free Remalna from an evil king. War is tougher than it seemed. When Meliara is caught by the enemy commander, the elegant Marquis of Shevraeth, it's escape or die.
Afterward, Meliara faces a tougher challenge: the battlefield is no longer mud and steel, but palaces, the weapons manners and fans. Toughest of all is courtship, when the one who catches her heart is her personal enemy—the new king.
This beloved romantic fantasy has been in continuous print for over twenty years. The definitive edition is corrected, with additional material in six much-requested inserts from the hero's point of view.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Meliara, the young countess of Tlanth, could be a medieval Rizzo, one tough cookie in a land where women and girls fight, spy, run companies of military guards and battle with short swords. Plus, when she washes the caked dirt off of her thin little face and throws off her raggedy tunic, she reveals bright blue eyes, a tiny waist and knee-length hair "not just brown, but brown and red and gold and wheat." Mel, as her brother Bran calls her, lives in the hills in a crumbling castle. They promise their embittered dying father to rid the land of the greedy king, who in addition to imposing the usual kingly evils of high taxes and cruel minions, plans to break the sacred covenant with the teeny Hill Folk, who protect the great forests and bestow Fire Sticks. The rollicking plot and prickly Meliara's adventures as she stumbles into the clutches of King Galdran and the distant and unfathomable Marquis of Shevraeth create a fantasy world fit for the most discriminating medieval partisan. It cleverly walks just this side of parody, getting away with lines like, "I wished I could personally flout him and his busy searchers, and make him look the fool he was." Smith (Wren to the Rescue) leaves the reader hanging at the end of this book, all the better to await Book II in the projected series. Ages 12-up.
