** I received an ARC for an honest review **
Publisher’s Description
LET ME TELL YOU A STORY…
AUDRA JASHOWIN is a storyteller without a purpose.
When all the tales in the land of Mithra-Sha lost their endings, Audra fled from her family’s rejection and the only home she ever knew. Now, with a sense of veiled danger haunting her heels and her life as devoid of direction as her stories, she arrives at long last in a city of fresh starts and second chances.
There, she finds an adventure greater than she ever dreamed.
JAIK GRISSOM might be the key to bringing back the power of all stories.
A simple farmhand with a way around weapons, Jaik possesses more than a sharp wit that sets Audra’s soul aflame. He’s a natural amplifier with the talent to breathe life into her tales…into all the tales in Mithra-Sha.
Chased from their comfortable lives by a stroke of ill luck on a fateful night, Audra and Jaik embark on a journey for answers-through the wilderness and over the raging sea, to the heart of storytelling itself. Along the way, the strange bond between them deepens as they begin to uncover a mystery that lurks beneath all the broken tales, written in the shroud of their own unlikely pasts.
To mend the fractured stories in Mithra-Sha, Audra and Jaik must learn to embrace what lives at the core of their own stories: the bravery and brilliance, the loyalty and love, and the purpose and power they both harness-together and apart.
And they must face a terrible truth penned between the pages of their quest…a tragedy that will change the course of history and rewrite the ending of their tale forever.
Summary
A Story Spun in Scarlet (Tales of Wonder and Woe, #1) is a new adventurous epic Fanasy series by US author Renee Dugan.
Review
A Story Spun in Scarlet is sprawling fantasy infused with great world-building and meticulous attention to the fantasy world that Dugan uses to immerse the reader in the story. This is a novel brimming with a cast of unique characters with a focus on marginalised groups. Dugan has created a compelling fantasy that follows the well-defined hero’s quest narrative while incorporating sociopolitical themes of marginalisation and persecution.
A well-written novel where the classic epic fantasy departs for strong feminism and focus on inequality.
Dugan writes with ease, compelling the reader deeper into the intricate world-building. At times there is a sense of slowed pace where the complexities of the world-building and sociopolitical intrigue could be more concisely delivered to maintain the high action pace of the beginning.
Conclusion
A recommend fantasy for fans of epic fantasy series, sociopolitical intrigue and thorough world-building in a classic hero’s quest fantasy but with strong feminist themes. Dugan has begun a new fantasy series to watch!
** This is my personal opinion and does not reflect any judging decisions **
Leanbh Pearson 