This is the first in a trilogy. Yeine Darr, a woman who is the daughter of an exiled Arameri (think Northern Europe) princess and a Darr (think pre-Colombian Meso-American) nobleman is summoned to her mother's home city after her mother has died suspiciously.
A new heir to her grandfather's throne must be chosen and somehow she must play a part. Some of her relatives want to kill her on sight; others are more sympathetic. But no one is telling her what's really going on or why her mother, the original Heir, fled in the first place.
The Arameri-her mother's people- are great wizards who have conquered the world (All 100,000 kingdoms) via the use of enslaved gods. The gods are throughly amoral with regards to humans. The Arameri live in a city that literally floats in the sky.
This was written by a woman and she has chosen to use first person narrative throughout. I HATE first person narrative in general. Nothing ever happens unless the narrator is there. In addition the author is a feminist who very much wants to play with and throw out traditional genre assumptions. Nothing wrong with that of course but the book really wasn't quite entertaining enough. I did perhaps learn to appreciate a little of my own male bias by having to attempt to look at everything through a woman's eyes. I might read the second book when it comes out but I'm not sure I'd buy it. It was a challenging read which is more than I can say for some authors these days.
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Winter is Coming Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
