Review: Beautifully written!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 12, 2014
Katie Stewart has a truly original voice.  In Treespeaker, she creates a solidly realized imaginary world populated by characters that are well-drawn and all too human.  One can easily imagine that the world of the Arrakeshi people is not too unlike the world of actual Iron Age societies who populated the forested regions of the world in times gone by.The hero is Jakan, a sort of shaman, whose power to foresee the future and heal the wounded is derived directly from his pure faith in the forest god Arrakesh.  He is often tormented, and filled with self-doubt in his quest to do the right thing, but nevertheless, his faith carries him along the path that he believes that Arrakesh wants him to follow.The world of the Arrakeshi is horribly disrupted by the arrival of a man who, by all outward appearances, is good and charming.  Jakan is the only one who seems to realize that this man is not who he appears to be, and that he constitutes a huge threat to the world of the Arrakeshi.  Jakan pays a huge and horrible price when he attempts to warn his fellow villagers about the danger that has come into their midst.This is not the usual fantasy story that features knights and dragons. My only criticism is that I wish that some of the characters that were introduced in the last third of the book were a bit more fully developed. But, to be fair, maybe I just wanted the story to last just a bit longer.If you're in the mood for a truly original bang-up good fantasy story, Treespeaker might just be the book for you.