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A review by cosymilko
Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier
5.0
The retelling of the Six Swans myth/fairy tale into a full blown fantasy novel with no sugar coating.
Sorcha was supposed to be the seventh son of a seventh son. Instead she is the image of her mother who died bringing her into the world. Her father has lost his heart and his world and throws himself into campaigning and spends little time around the children until they are able to bear a sword and heed his words.
Sorcha's six brothers raise her as best they can. A wild healer with a great knowledge of herblore Sorcha helps the villagers with her skills.
Around Sorcha's 13th birthday their father returns home with his new betrothed. This woman is powerful and evil and will stop at nothing to have the children gone. She casts a spell that turns the six brothers into swans and it is up to Sorcha to weave six shirts from the thorny Starwort plant and to place them on the swans to break the spell, all the while she cannot tell her story and cannot communicate in anyway.
Her path is hard to walk but leads straight and true.
I loved this book so much. The six swans is one of my favourite fairy tales and this retelling in a much more realistic way is beautiful and poetic. The suffering Sorcha must endure, the feelings the brothers must understand and the love she mustn't see are all beautiful in their own way.
Sorcha was supposed to be the seventh son of a seventh son. Instead she is the image of her mother who died bringing her into the world. Her father has lost his heart and his world and throws himself into campaigning and spends little time around the children until they are able to bear a sword and heed his words.
Sorcha's six brothers raise her as best they can. A wild healer with a great knowledge of herblore Sorcha helps the villagers with her skills.
Around Sorcha's 13th birthday their father returns home with his new betrothed. This woman is powerful and evil and will stop at nothing to have the children gone. She casts a spell that turns the six brothers into swans and it is up to Sorcha to weave six shirts from the thorny Starwort plant and to place them on the swans to break the spell, all the while she cannot tell her story and cannot communicate in anyway.
Her path is hard to walk but leads straight and true.
I loved this book so much. The six swans is one of my favourite fairy tales and this retelling in a much more realistic way is beautiful and poetic. The suffering Sorcha must endure, the feelings the brothers must understand and the love she mustn't see are all beautiful in their own way.