To Read & To Write

Now this - this is a good old-fashioned fairy-tale. Perhaps somewhat predictable, at least for me, this by no means ruins the tightly bound suspense Juliet Marillier builds in her perfectly crafted novel "Dreamer's Pool", the first in a series. The story focuses not on the lady elucidated on the cover, but another, Blackthorn, an ex-healer, or wise woman as they used to call them, who is wrongfully imprisoned by an unjust ruler of treacherous lands. Who knows when the story takes place exactly, but it can be deduced that it was a pre-industrial and extremely rural time, a time of forests, kingdoms, peasants, princes, and princesses, good and evil kings, a time seething with enchantment as well as the inevitable fey, a time physically and mentally harsh, a time when people swam through confusion to find what it is we call *value*. While in prison, Blackthorn becomes an aquaintence of the husky, burly Grim, more like a beast than a man, brutal and monstrous yet gentle ...