Reader and Raelynx (Twelve Houses Series #4)

by Sharon Shinn

Overview

The final confrontation is here: the fourth book in the stunning fantasy series.

In a world of secret sorceries and forbidden desires, the mystic Cammon must put aside his personal feelings for Princess Amalie and help her find a suitor, until he discovers that he needs to protect her from her own powers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780441016457
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/30/2008
Series:	A Twelve Houses Novel , #4
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	646,707
Product dimensions:	4.27(w) x 6.73(h) x 1.22(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Sharon Shinn is a journalist who works for a trade magazine. Her first novel, The Shapechanger's Wife, was selected by  Locus as the best first fantasy novel of 1995. She has won the William C. Crawford Award for Outstanding New Fantasy Writer, and was twice nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. A graduate of Northwestern University, she has lived in the Midwest most of her life.

Editorial Reviews

At the start of Shinn's exciting fourth Twelve Houses fantasy (after 2006's Dark Moon Defender), King Baryn decides it's time to marry off his daughter, Amalie, given the precarious political situation in Gillengaria. Baryn recruits a group of talented mystics, led by gray-eyed Senneth, to help stabilize the succession. Cammon, a commoner with special powers, watches over Amalie as men pay court, even as he and Amalie fall hopelessly in love. As their relationship flowers, the political situation worsens after Baryn's assassinated. Landowners struggle for power and armed clashes begin, but the real battles play out on a personal level. First, Senneth is kidnapped by a hopeful would-be king, Halchon, whose mere touch takes her magic away. Then, Senneth must confront Halchon's sister (and her longtime nemesis), Coralinda, in an epic showdown that unites the mystics in a struggle for their very right to exist. Intrigue, love and magic weave into Shinn's hallmark romantic, happy-ever-after ending. (Nov.)

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Publishers Weekly

Summoned to the palace to use his "reading" skills to see into the hearts of the suitors for the hand of the Princess Amalie, the mystic Cammon falls in love with Amalie despite his knowledge that their love is forbidden. When the king's subjects rise in rebellion, however, thoughts turn to survival-for the king and for the woman he loves. Shinn (Archangel) continues her powerful and richly detailed "Twelve Houses" series (Dark Moon Defender) with a tale of dangerous love and open rebellion. Libraries should purchase where the series or the author has a following.

—Jackie Cassada

Library Journal

Shinn (Dark Moon Defender, 2006, etc.) neatly and delightfully wraps up a four-volume romantic-fantasy series in which six comrades bearing exceptional magical and/or martial abilities fall in love with entirely unsuitable partners against the backdrop of a looming civil war. As rebellious nobles and the devotees of a magic-hating religious cult prepare to topple King Baryn from the throne of Gillengaria, he and his advisors decide to secure the line of succession by marrying off his daughter, 19-year-old Princess Amalie. To confirm that Amalie's suitors are truly well-intentioned, the king enlists the help of Cammon, an extraordinarily powerful reader of thoughts and emotions. The more time Cammon spends with Amalie, the more he's convinced that Amalie is a magically gifted mystic herself, a danger in a land where mystics are at best mistrusted and at worst brutally slaughtered. But Cammon's concern for Amalie is more than merely patriotic-the common-born young man is falling in love with Amalie, and she with him. Although the novel's entirely appropriate resolution seems foreordained, there are plenty of great twists, thrilling action sequences and long-awaited comeuppances along the way. A chocolate truffle of a novel: richly indulgent, darkly sweet and utterly satisfying.

Kirkus Reviews