Reviewed: October 5th, 2023
Released: August 25th, 2022
Genre: Epic Fantasy
A healer with the talent to unravel death. A stillborn child brought to life. A father lusting for vengeance. And a son torn between justice, faith, and love. Caught in a chase spanning kingdoms, each must decide the nature of good and evil, the lengths they will go to survive, and what they are willing to lose.
A healer and dabbler in the dark arts of life and death, Barus is as gnarled as an ancient tree. Forgotten in the chaos of the dying queen’s chamber, he spirits away her stillborn infant and in a hovel at the meadow’s edge, breathes life into the wisp of a child. He names her Aster for the lea’s white flowers. Raised as his daughter, she, too, learns to heal death.
Denied a living heir, the widowed king spies from a distance. But he heeds the claims of the fiery Vicar of the Red Order—in the eyes of the Blessed One, Aster is an abomination, and to embrace the evil of resurrection will doom his rule.
As the king’s life nears its end, he defies the vicar’s warning and summons the necromancer’s daughter. For his boldness, he falls to an assassin’s blade. Armed with righteousness and iron-clad conviction, the Order’s brothers ride into the leas to cleanse the land of evil.
To save her father’s life, Aster leads them beyond Verdane’s wall into the Forest of Silvern Cats, a wilderness of dragons and barbarian tribes. Unprepared for a world rife with danger and unchecked power, a world divided by those who practice magic and those who hunt them, she must choose whether to trust the one man offering her aid, the one man most likely to betray her—her enemy’s son.
Helen’s thoughts: 5/5
A wonderful story about Aster, a young woman who was born dead and brought back to life by a necromancer’s skill. Aster has always known she was different, after all, it’s not every girl who can feed a dragon apples!
Aster is a lovely character, naive and protected, she learns the healing arts, one of which is healing death, until her ailing blood father, the king, returns to claim her as his heir. Her life is ripped apart by the Vicar of the Red Order, the person who hates and reviles the man who brought her up, the necromancer.
There is plenty of wonderful prose, inner angst and tussling with beliefs and reality.
Joreh is a great love interest, and he’s the one who goes through the most change as he struggles with his fathers rhetoric and his own understanding of the world around him.
Lots of world building, wild dragons and silver cats who roam the forests. Plenty to draw you in and keep you reading.
Purchase The Necromancer’s Daughter via Amazon
Link to book on Amazon UK: eBook | Paperback
Link to book on Amazon US: eBook | Paperback
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If you enjoy fantasy books then you will love my epic fantasy Sentinal series or the Romantic Fantasy SoulMist series. As a new threat against Remargaren is discovered, only one man can wake the ancient guards who can protect them, only he doesn’t know how. Start the adventure and stay for the journey. Sign up to my newsletter and download a free novella called Sentinals Stirring and get notified when my next books are published.
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