Dragon Heart
A Fantasy Novel
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- 11,99 €
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- 11,99 €
Publisher Description
In Dragon Heart, Cecelia Holland, America's most distinguished historical novelist steps fully into the realm of fantasy and makes it her own.
Where the Cape of the Winds juts into the endless sea, there is Castle Ocean, and therein dwells the royal family that has ruled it from time immemorial. But an eastern Empire has risen, and its forces have reached the castle. King Reymarro is dead in battle, and by the new treaty, Queen Marioza must marry one of the Emperor's brothers. While Marioza delays, her youngest son, Jeon, goes on a journey in search of his mute twin, Tirza, who needs to be present for the wedding.
As Jeon and Tirza return by sea, their ship is attacked by a powerful dragon, red as blood and big as the ship. Thrown into the water, Tirza clings to the dragon, and after an underwater journey, finds herself alone with the creature in an inland sea pool. Surprisingly, she is able to talk to the beast, and understand it.
So begins a saga of violence, destruction, and death, of love and monsters, human and otherwise.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Castle Ocean has been the seat of the same royal family for generations, and there are stories that their ancestors came out of the sea. Now they must figure out how to avoid being conquered in this darkly charming tale set in a fantasy realm, the first overtly fantastical novel from historical fiction author Holland (Kings of the North). Tirza, the youngest child, who is mute, is fetched home to Castle Ocean from the convent she's been kept in; her mother, Queen Marioza, is being forced to marry the brother of the emperor of an encroaching empire and insists that she will not wed until she has all her children with her. But shipwreck and other troubles mean it will be some time until Tirza sees Castle Ocean again, and she is unable to tell anyone about what befell her in the interim a silence that has huge effects on her family's quiet war. Holland's inspired combination of familial domesticity and political plotting changes moods neatly and repeatedly, managing to be cozy, horrific, and mythic by turns. The resolution feels somewhat abbreviated, but this is a minor flaw in an otherwise impressively accomplished novel.
