Verdant spores explode into fast-growing vines if they get wet, which means inhaling them can be deadly. The seas on Tress’ world are dangerous because they’re not made of water-they’re made of colorful spores that pour down from the world’s 12 stationary moons.
To do that, she’ll have to get off the barren island she’s forbidden to leave, cross the dangerous Verdant Sea, the even more dangerous Crimson Sea, and the totally deadly Midnight Sea, and somehow defeat the unbeatable Sorceress. Charlie, meanwhile, has been captured by the mysterious Sorceress who rules the Midnight Sea, which leaves Tress with no choice but to go rescue him. When the duke realizes the two teenagers are falling in love, he takes Charlie away to find a suitable wife-and returns with a different young man as his heir. Charlie is the son of the local duke, but he likes stories more than fencing.
Tress is an ordinary girl with no thirst to see the world. This darkly luminous fantasy reads like a mystery, thoroughly and wonderfully transporting readers to another world.Ī fantasy adventure with a sometimes-biting wit. The ending is a little too neat and solves a problem that’s at best tangential to the main plot, but overall the book is such a rich feast that it’s well worth reading. In particular, Knox has created a faerie realm that’s seductively tactile. Elements that might strain credulity in a lesser writer’s hands here read like simple facts. All these threads-Taryn’s loss, her desire for revenge, her complicity in murder, and the mysterious box that can’t be burned-are drawn together slowly and carefully over the course of this densely woven novel. Someone or something else seems to be speaking through her, asking about a fire in her grandparents’ library and something that came through the fire undamaged, an “ancient scroll box known as 'the Firestarter,' ” which has supposedly “survived no fewer than five fires in famous libraries.” And then, on her way to visit a French library, Taryn is attacked, and she, Jacob Berger, and a strange young man all fall through a doorway into another world. Years later, after having written a book about all kinds of threats to books and libraries-bears, mold, silverfish, budget cuts-Taryn starts losing time. When the murderer turns up dead, the police question Taryn, mainly as a formality-though young detective Jacob Berger remains convinced she had something to do with it. Taryn Cornick’s sister, Beatrice, was killed in a random attack when Taryn was 19.
A tale of hidden secrets, hidden worlds, and the price we pay for our hidden desires.
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