Prepare to be entranced by this multi-layered, feisty story – a masterpiece of world-building on a complex and engaging scale.
Three women – Ali, Merindah, and Dee – and their three dragons live on different worlds. Each world is imperilled, and each woman can act to stave off the danger, but only at enormous cost to herself. Add to this the tiny but rather important fact that they all share the one soul, and you begin to realise the enormity of the challenge ahead of them. As in the best of quest adventures, there is also a time limit for them to reunite their divided existences.
This is intelligent high-fantasy-sci-fi-dystopian-‘hopepunk’ that defies categorisation as it cleverly employs and exploits elements of many genres. I also like the Australian influences, especially because the timelessness of the land and the richness of the indigenous cultural history are woven into the story so seamlessly.
The novel benefits enormously from foregrounding three complicated, strong and self-determined women, although of course I am (somewhat guiltily) just as in love with the dragons.
Oooh, did I mention there are DRAGONS? 🙂
There are multiple points of view and a few timelines for the reader to navigate, on top of the three struggling worlds that our three protagonists inhabit. Hang in for a little and you will be completely captured by this world.
This is the first of the Opal Dreaming Chronicles and it will be interesting to see how the author manages the combination and the threads of the plot in the next (and I hope a third). This is such a rich story that it deserves at least three books – and maybe more. I am reminded of Katharine Kerr and her Deverry series such as my favourite Daggerspell, where there are wonderful characters, manifold timelines, reincarnations galore, and – you guessed it – dragons! I think I have discovered a new favourite.
I can’t wait for book two…