The Dark Lord's Daughter
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4.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dealing with Dragons comes this timeless fantasy, about an ordinary girl who discovers she's the heir to a dark throne, and must find her place between her life on Earth and her magical inheritance.
"A heart-stopping, unique adventure for all!" —Tamora Pierce, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Kayla is just an ordinary girl . . . or so she thinks. When a day at the state fair is interrupted by the news that she’s the daughter of a “Dark Lord,” she and her family are quickly whisked to another world—one that’s chock-full of magic but lacking in technology!
As her family encounters fantastical creatures in place of their Earthly gadgets, Kayla must prepare for the unpreparable: meeting her father, the Dark Lord himself, for the very first time. All Kayla wants is to go home, but she must learn magic to do so. The catch? For the Dark Lord’s daughter, the road to mastering magic is filled with evil traditions.
As she ventures closer to her father, Kayla must decide whether to accept her birthright. Is she destined for darkness? Or can she become a new kind of Dark Lady?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While attending the Minnesota State Fair with her adoptive mother and brother, 14-year-old Kayla Jones is approached by Waylon, second commander of the Dark Hordes of Zaradwin, who bids her to take her late Dark Lord father's throne. The family is promptly transported to Zaradwin, where Kayla is greeted as the realm's prospective Dark Lady, a role in which she would follow in her father's footsteps. The Jones family would prefer to return home, but accessing enough magic to transport them back requires Kayla to embrace her new function, and the power that comes with it—if she can survive until the official ceremony of investiture. Kayla is nevertheless reluctant to perform the duties of a Dark Lady (battling rivals, waging war, and executing minions), and her presence may upset a land caught in a perpetual war between Light and Dark. In a tongue-in-cheek survey of epic fantasy tropes, Wrede (the Enchanted Forest Chronicles) creates an intentionally generic fantasy world that's keenly devoted to its traditions. Featuring droll chapter headings ("So You Are a Potential Dark Lord," "Discovering Your Dark Heritage") that structure an exposition-heavy telling of family dynamics and character growth, this is an amusing story of finding one's place amid the unfamiliar. Its fantasy-world-incompatible technology-turned-familiars are particularly memorable. Most characters read as white. Ages 8–12.
Customer Reviews
Imaginative with a main character that you love to follow
Although the main character is a teenager she approaches things with a consideration and maturity that makes her delightful to follow her specially in her interpersonal interactions. No whining or teenage angst and rebelliousness that is so common in a character of this age. She is much more like the 14 year olds that I actually know.
The world itself is intensely interesting. She just scratches the surface of the rules of magic. It’s enough for the story, but leaves you hoping she will write a sequel.
So many books to this target audience are predictable in their progression, I had no idea where this was headed and it was a delight when we got there.
A standalone written like a series opener
It’s a perfectly nice story, except that they spend a lot of time going “we need to figure out how to get home!” and then it ends before they even really figure out how to figure out how to get home. Much is made of her need to learn magic, but she learns barely any. There isn’t even an epilogue that shows Kayla working on it. If this was a series, that would be fine, but there’s no indication that a sequel is coming. It left me feeling like nothing was really resolved at the end.