Firethorn
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- ¥2,200
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- ¥2,200
発行者による作品情報
Firethorn, the first volume in an epic trilogy, is a stunning debut. Sarah Micklem has introduced an unforgettable heroine into the fantasy pantheon. Loving, reckless, and indomitable, Firethorn travels through an imaginary world as real as history and as marvelous as legend.
Firethorn flees a life of drudgery to live alone in the forest, relying on her knowledge of herb lore to survive. She returns transformed, indebted to the god who saved her life, and blessed -- or cursed -- with uncanny abilities and a nagging sense of destiny. After a few nights of dalliance with Sire Galan, a high-caste warrior on his way to join the king's army, Firethorn seizes the chance to go with him, only to find she has exchanged one form of servitude for another.
The army readies for war in the vast encampment of the Marchfield, where men prey on each other and women dare go nowhere alone. Among the lowborn harlots and the highborn dames of the camp, Firethorn learns to use her gifts as a healer, venturing into realms of dream and shadow.
Desire drew Firethorn and Sire Galan together, but love binds them -- a love that has no place in the arrangement between a warrior and his sheath. When Galan makes a wager with disastrous consequences, Firethorn uses her gifts to intervene in his fate and learns just how hard it can be to tell honor from dishonor, justice from vengeance.
Sarah Micklem has written an extraordinary tale -- at once magical and earthbound, beautiful and violent. She immerses readers in a remarkably imagined world where gods are meddlesome, the highborn uphold their privileges with casual brutality, and a woman's only recourse may be the strength she finds within.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Micklem's majestic and powerful debut, the first volume of a fantasy trilogy, introduces a compelling heroine with a strong, original voice. A sweeping adventure saga as mystical as it is raw, the novel is also a biting commentary on violence and its effect on relationships defined by a caste system. Luck, a lowborn mudfolk orphan, changes her name to Firethorn in honor of the hallucinogenic berries she ingests in the Kingswood after a life-altering rape by a Blood, the highborn warrior she's worked for as a drudge. Now "god-bothered," she discovers that her already uncanny gifts, such as seeing in the dark, have intensified, as has her desire to escape. During UpsideDown Days, the season when "Low is high and high is low, and people seize chances they've been waiting for all year," the flame-haired Firethorn couples with another Blood, Sire Galan, and impulsively accepts his offer to serve as his sheath and bedmate. Later, her fortitude will be severely tested in the often brutally sexist world of the warrior. Enriched but not defined by the influences of many cultures (Celtic, Norse, Egyptian, etc.) and authors as diverse as Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ursula K. Le Guin, Mary Renault, Jean Auel, Margaret Atwood and, yes, even Tolkein, this hypnotic tale of passion and survival will resonate with sophisticated readers of both sexes.
