A rather irritatingly dense hero. Story ok. ( )

Roger has a peculiar gift. When he experiences intense pain he escapes it by “crossing over” to the land of the dead. As a teenager he was forced by his uncle to use this gift to make money at local fairs. Through a tragic chain of events he ends up at royal court in the midst of a battle between the Queen and her successor. After the Queen’s murder Roger is drawn into the middle of the intrigue, using his gift to help the Queendom.

There is a lot intrigue, sci/fi fantasy, a taste of historical fiction and a love interest. I did not realize this was a Y/A book until after I picked it up. The ending lends itself to a sequel. As interesting as the concept was I am not sure I would pick up a sequel.
( )

I read this one at the same time as I was reading Bitterblue (Bitterblue was a big lump of a book and wasn't a good carry-along book) and I quite happily put it aside for a few days to finish off Bitterblue and a few other books, I actually forgot I was reading it until I went to my work bag to get something and found it with the bookmark in it.

It sounds like an interesting book, boy, Roger, can visit the otherworld and see the dead, he can communicate with them even. This skill is seen as witchcraft and he could burn for doing it. He has to experience pain to do it and his uncle is ready and willing to oblige. He earns money for his uncle doing this and this is keeping him alive. He has been taught that nothing good comes of trusting people.

A twisted plot by his uncle ends him up on a complicated journey that ends in the court of one of two rival queens, there he discovers that he has a value, but it's complicated.

One minor point, a rankle, the male of Laundress is Launderer, Laundress is not a gender neutral word.

It just didn't grab me, the character didn't seem to learn much from his errors and just bumbled his way through the story, heaping lies upon lies until he had to do something to keep himself alive.

Not sorry I read it but definitely not rushing to find the sequel. ( )

The story starts by putting its best foot forward as we observe Roger, a slave to his uncle, being forced to cross over to the land of the dead in order to scam mourners out of their money. The author’s idea of this land where the dead exist is not at all what I was expecting and so much the better for it. The way that it’s described, it’s as though the dead are all waiting for something maybe? They sit and stare at nothing; they’re, for the most part, unresponsive and only a few will rouse themselves long enough to interact with Roger. But then, though Roger describes this land as being heavily populated, I can’t imagine that there were nearly enough dead there. This led me to speculate about what could possibly have happened to all those other dead from times gone by. Whether or not the author intends to address this in future books I couldn’t say, but it certainly opens the door to vast opportunities.

After this strong opening, though, the story gets a bit weird as Roger arrives in the court of his Queendom. There were a lot of slow parts here, though I have to take into consideration that I was rarely able to read more than a chapter at a time and this may have affected how I saw the advancement of the plot.

The reader is introduced to Lady Cecilia at this point and Roger’s infatuation. The story is told in Roger’s voice and he believes himself to be in love with the pretty little flirt but it’s obvious that it’s only infatuation as there’s actually very little substantial communication between the two characters, not to mention that Cecilia always treats Roger as her inferior (which in the court he is but he can’t see that this means she could never bring herself to view him as a potential suitor). I didn’t really like his obsession with Cecilia, mostly because I didn’t buy that he could be that obsessed just due to her looks.

There is also, of course, a bigger political intrigue going on around them. This is court and what’s court without political backstabbing? In this case, the Queendom is ruled by a queen who is supposed to pass power to her daughter when the daughter turns 35. However, this time around the old queen didn’t consider her daughter fit to rule and refused to pass on the power. This didn’t stop her daughter from having herself crowned and setting up her own court within her mother’s court. She’s also determined to get her Queendom at any cost.

Roger comes into all of this in that the young queen recognises him as one able to cross to the other side and she tries to use him to gather intel there. Of course, for the most part the dead won’t talk to him so he invents a lot of this intel. This is another part of the book that I wasn’t particularly fond of. The parts in the land of the living and the passages where Roger crossed over to the land of the dead had nothing to do with each other and it left me feeling unsatisfied. I understand why it was there and done like this, I just didn’t enjoy it much.

Once Roger’s out of the court again, chasing Cecilia as she’s brought the queen’s wrath down upon her head, things pick up again for a while. I really liked the intrigue of Soulvine Moor – a place no one will speak of but the place where Roger’s mother died. I really liked the hints at who Roger is and I was fascinated by the picture painted at this point. I found myself really immersed in the book.

And then Cecilia comes back into it again and everything collapsed. I didn’t like Cecilia to start with and Roger’s unhealthy obsession with the girl and his selfishness that dictates all his actions at this point pushed me to the point where I didn’t like Roger either. I found this part to be particularly boring as all it focuses on is both characters’ bad points. I just ended up feeling really frustrated with both characters.

Thankfully, it picks up again for the final climax. I found myself completely immersed in the story at this point. I was itching to read all evening but couldn’t slink away to find a quiet spot. Eventually, I managed to finish the novel, though. I feel that it left off in just about the perfect place; it has certainly caught my attention enough for me to want to read the sequel. Especially as there won’t be any Cecilia in it!

The setting was very interesting and about the opposite of what might be expected. The world is fairly reminiscent of a mediaeval landscape but then the wild savages come with heir firesticks that they call guns – usually it’d be the more civilised society that gains the secrets of guns first but I really like what the author did here. As mentioned before, the land of the dead was also very interesting, particularly when Roger starts inadvertently affecting it. That was an original twist even if the twist itself could be seen a mile off.

However, I have to admit that I often found Roger to be a frustrating character. He had a lot of character flaws and at times these eclipsed his good points so much that I found myself wondering whether I really wanted to continue with this series after this book. The ending means that I do but it was touch and go for a while.

The whole thing with Cecilia really didn’t work for me either. The problem with this is that it’s Roger’s desire for Cecilia that pushes certain points of the narrative. It just wasn’t founded beyond Cecilia’s beauty, which meant that Roger’s obsession with the girl came across as creepy rather than romantic. I liked Maggie. She gave it to him straight and would put him in his place. I look forward to getting to know her better in the next book.

Choosing to write this book from a young male’s point of view was an interesting decision on the author’s behalf. It certainly made the book stand out from the masses of books written from a female point of view. I’m not completely sold on all Roger’s bodily reactions, though, but that said not being a male myself I don’t really know how all that works and maybe it’s justified by the rampant hormones of a 14-year-old boy! ( )

Pain; it is the cause of Roger’s gift, a gift that is more like a curse. When in enough pain Roger can cross over to the Land of the Dead and speak to the people there. His uncle uses violence, to get him crossing over so that he can feed the curiosity of the paying customers at the fairgrounds.

After being embroiled in an attack on a shipwreck, Roger has the chance at a new life, a chance to be part of the royal court. At court he ends up at the beck-in-call of the two Queens of Queendom, leading him to decide what side he is on. He also meets and falls for the willful Lady Cecilia, who treats him as a servant.

A light fantasy novel that does not . The plot could have had more depth and build on the ‘crossing over’ parts a little more. Roger was very young and wishy-washy. I did enjoy ( )