Carol Berg - Son of Avonar

A violent fugitive who cannot speak, who has no past. A disgraced noblewoman who would rather forget her past. And a world of magic that has turned against both of them. 

Seriana Marguerite, daughter of a warrior house, once believed that intelligence, determination, and love could avert the consequences of youthful rebellion. She was wrong. Violating the singular tenet of the Four Realms—that sorcery and all who practice it must be reported and exterminated—brought torment and death to those closest to her. Only her family’s influence preserved her own life, a mercy for which she has never been thankful. Over the years Seri has adapted to poverty and exile, far from royal intrigues and the politics of power. 

But her bitter peace collapses on the day she encounters a half-mad fugitive—a man incapable of speech, yet skilled at violence. The discovery that one of his dead-eyed pursuers is the man responsible for the horrors of her past forces Seri onto a path of anguished memory and ancient riddles, a race to unravel the mysteries of the fugitive’s identity, his mission, and a looming danger that could shatter the very foundation of the world.

Comment: Many years ago, before I even got this blog, I've read the trilogy Rai-Kirah by author Carol Berg. I've liked the fantasy series as a whole and thought I might try something else by the author and that is why I had this book in the pile. After years waiting, I finally started it.

When this story begins we meet Lady Seriana "Seri" Marguerite, a noble woman who lives in exile after the death of her husband, condemned and killed for being a sorcerer. Although sorcerers aren't evil as legends claim, fear and laws demand the ones guilty being killed by fire and lady Seri never negated her marriage nor her vows, thus making herself someone still part of an aristocratic family, but no longer accepted. Things change one day, when she ends up helping a man who can't seem to speak nor give her any kind of information about who he is and why he was near her house. She realizes he was running from someone and that he also has some magical power, making him a sorcerer, and the guards would certainly want to know about it. Seri decides to help this man, to avoid one more death by fire, but will she be able to do it while dealing with her own memories?

At first, I was properly captivated by this story and by lady Seri's life and thoughts (she narrates the story). I liked her personality and I liked to know more about this fantasy world where magic is seen as evil through her eyes. She also would include some memories of past events which happened to her and which alluded to unpleasant things and I really started to care about what would happen next to her.

However, despite the fascinating world building and the author's imagination in developing it, I confess I started to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information and by the several fighting scenes the more the plot advanced. I started to feel lost among so many things and it also felt as if there were too many distractions from other situations and not as much focus on what was supposed to be happening, namely with lady Seri helping the stranger finding out who he was. Well, this did happen, but the path to this wasn't as addictive to me as the first chapters had been.

I also wasn't very fond of the technique used to make the reader aware of why certain things were perceived by Lady Seri the way they were. At first, we would only have a few sentences hinting at past scenes or memories and obviously we knew bad things had happened. I thought this would be the method to let us know about lady Seri's past, and what had led to the life she was living now in exile, but no. As the chapters advanced, we would have more and more pages of the actual situations, as if lady Seri's memories had to be presented full, so we go from her meeting her husband and how they became close, than married, then the problems with him being magical... it became tiring to have all this in the middle of what was already a complicated plot to follow. 

From a certain point on, I was too distracted to really pay enough attention. I was aware they learned the stranger's name and who he was in the sorcerer's country/region?, but not why he fixed himself in being close to lady Seri. I also got the notion they, along with a few friends, went on a journey to find out more about him and to help him stay away from the guards' radar. Then, more enemies besides the royal guards show up and while I can't summarize what happened correctly, I finished the novel with enough to satisfy my curiosity of what happened, but not enough to want to read more of this world (this is the first installment in a series of four).

I think this likely would appeal to fantasy lovers, all the ingredients are there for this to be enjoyable, but I'd have liked a world where there were enough positive aspects, whether in the society or in the people, to balance out the negative ones. The fight/battle against evil is always a worthy one in fantasy, and I'd be happy about it just like that, but my preferences have evolved to a level in which I also need the world and the characters to offer more than the usual roles. There are enough clues here that point to what might happen in the next books, and reading reviews on those books is sufficient to me.

Grade: 6/10