Review: Far Better Than One Would Expect
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 9, 2013
Sara King is an author of "character-driven" books.  In other words, if you actually like pages of techno-babble in Sci Fi books, or five pages of description of a single dress in romance books, Ms. King's books aren't for you.  However, if you want to be inside a character's head and heart, to feel and think what they do and why, you've hit the jackpot!  "To the Princess Bound," the first book in the "Terms of Mercy" series was my first experience of Ms. King's genius.  I was hooked before I finished the first page, and knew I'd found a new addition to my very short list of favorite authors.I immediately identified with Dragomir Shipborn, the lead male character of this romantic fantasy tale.  He is an Emp (short for Empath) with the gift of healing.  He's a physically huge man with a gentle, generous and compassionate heart that was broken when he was unable to heal or bring back his wife when she was murdered by a Praetorian (more or less, the Royal Police of the planet, Mercy).  I felt his pain and empathized with his complete loss of hope as well as his inability to refuse to use his gifts to help those in need in spite of his own losses and wishes.  When he is captured and taken from his small remote village and made slave to the Crown Princess, Victory, he is forced to set aside his personal mission (read to find out what it is!) to try to heal a person who has been shattered and devastated even more than he, himself, has been.Kidnapped and sold into slavery when her ship "crashes" in a remote village far from the capitol city of Mercy, Victory is chained to a post in the middle of the village and used for the deviant desires of anyone who wants her.  For two years, she is repeatedly raped, beaten, starved and exposed to the elements until her twin brother manages to find and rescue her.  Their father, the king, is a cruel and heartless man who despises both his children and has no compassion for his daughter's condition upon her return to the Royal Palace.  His idea of a cure for Victory's terror of men is to have his son find a huge, terrifying man and chain him to Victory so that she will learn not to fear men.  Prince Matthias obeys, and after a lengthy search for just the right man, captures Dragomir and binds him to his sister.Of course, they fall in love; this is a romance, DUH!  But it doesn't happen immediately or even as one would imagine.  What happens between the forced companionship and the bonding between Dragomir and Victory is a heartbreaking, fascinating read involving the healing of emotional wounds and scars, betrayals, attempted assassinations, treason and watching Victory's transformation from spoiled uncompassionate, albeit brutalized, brat into the fair and just woman her people need.