Tidespeaker
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A girl with the power to command the tides has her life changed when she secures a job serving a wealthy noble family--only to learn upon arrival that the last person to fill her post mysteriously died, and her new employers are hiding dark secrets--in this haunting and lush debut fantasy.
Corith Fraine is a Floodmouth – her words can control water. Yet for those born with her rare elemental ability, paths forward are few, and Corith is one of the lucky ones. She has spent most of her life in a prestigious magic institution, training to one day achieve the highest possible honor for a member of her kind: the chance to serve one of the hundred noble houses.
When Corith learns she’s secured a post working for House Shearwater, a reclusive noble family living on a wave-battered island, she thinks her hard work has paid off. Until she discovers that their previous Floodmouth – Corith’s closest friend – mysteriously died in their service. And Corith is her replacement.
To learn the truth of her best friend’s accident, Corith must unravel the dark conspiracies at the heart of Bower Island. Yet doing so will require contending with the island’s deadly tides and her enigmatic new employers – including the family’s brooding youngest son, Llir, who she finds herself equally drawn to and repelled by. With her loyalties pushed to the breaking point, these treacherous waters may well pull Corith under…
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this tense and atmospheric fantasy novel, humans gifted with elemental abilities, called Orha, are subjugated and forced to use their powers in service of nobility. As a Floodmouth, 18-year-old Corith Fraine can communicate with and control water. After graduating from the grueling Arbenhaw institution, a school for Orha, Corith is employed by the noble House Shearwater, replacing Zennia, the Shearwaters' previous Floodmouth and Corith's former roommate, who died in a mysterious accident. Upon arriving at the Shearwaters' remote island estate, Corith is thrust into an unfamiliar world of treacherous political maneuvering, luxurious decadence, and dark secrets. As she investigates Zennia's death, Corith becomes involved with a pro-Orha activist group, collecting blackmail material about the Shearwaters and sabotaging their defenses against Orha magic on the group's behalf. The deeper she dives into her inquiry, covert rebellion, and Floodmouth duties, the more strained her competing loyalties become, especially as she finds herself falling for one of her employers. In a debut that tackles themes of exploitation and privilege, Turner conjures a world of vivid elemental magic and shadowy intrigue with simmering romantic undertones, culminating in an attention-grabbing duology opener. The protagonists cue as white. Ages 12–up.
