Sorrow's Knot
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the 2014 Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy, from the author of Plain Kate.At the very edge of the world live the Shadowed People. And with them live the dead.There, in the village of Westmost, Otter is born to power. She is the proud daughter of Willow, the greatest binder of the dead in generations. It will be Otter's job someday to tie the knots of the ward, the only thing that keeps the living safe.Kestrel is training to be a ranger, one of the brave women who venture into the forest to gather whatever the Shadowed People can't live without and to fight off whatever dark threat might slip through the ward's defenses.And Cricket wants to be a storyteller -- already he shows the knack, the ear -- and already he knows dangerous secrets. But something is very wrong at the edge of the world. Willow's power seems to be turning inside out. The ward is in danger of falling. And lurking in the shadows, hungry, is a White Hand, the most dangerous of the dead, whose very touch means madness, and worse.Suspenseful, eerie, and beautifully imagined.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Otter is the daughter of Willow, the most powerful woman in a matriarchy that exists on the edge of a dangerous forest. Willow, the binder, casts yarn into "wards" that protect the village by keeping the dead at bay. Although Otter has inherited her mother's magic, Willow mysteriously refuses to teach her spells, expels her from home, and chooses another girl as her apprentice. Otter must rely on two best friends: Kestrel, a ranger in training, and Cricket, who plans to become the village's storyteller. When Cricket runs afoul of head ranger Thistle, the three friends leave the village for an uncertain future. Bow's background in science is evident in her Northern American setting; everything from the botany to the zoology feels authentic. Her prose is painterly, though the pacing occasionally lags under the weight of descriptive exposition. As with Bow's debut, Plain Kate (2010), this dark fantasy has an old-fashioned feel: there's a strong-willed protagonist with little knowledge of how to channel her power, and readers will enjoy watching her discover that "the world was larger than we knew." Ages 12 up.
