Review: fabulous fantasy novel
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 9, 2013
Rogue's Pawn (Covenant of Thorns)Jeffe Kennedy .Well, saw this recommended and it sounded like one I'd enjoy so bought it. (despite getting lots of free review books I still buy too many !) Anyway its something really unusual and magical.Gwynn is at a party and bored, walks out and by a series of co incidences ends up in another world. She can't believe what's happening at first, then she's attacked by the Black Dog that's been haunting her dreams recently, and wakes up chained in what seems like a mediaeval castle. She needs healing and the Lord of the castle, Rogue, has arranged it for her. Its nothing like here though with bandages, stitches and creams, but based around magical healing where the lady healer is aided by a cat familiar...Welcome to the land of Fae.  Then she learns everything comes at a cost and she has to pay for her healing with servitude arranged by the seductive and mysterious Rogue. By a strange exchange between different parties she has to undergo paying that debt by way of  training to use her magic. She didn't know she had any. Now she needs to learn to control it as everything she thinks of appears in reality...and it could prove dangerous if she has no control.The way the Fae speak too is interesting, a sort of telepathy which she can hear inside her mind, they talk and her mind translates the gist of what they say into something she can understand - there are times though when the translation leaves much to be desired. They all say she's shouting as she projects her thoughts so loudly, that's lesson one, how to be quieter.She owes a debt to Rogue too - and he wants as his payment her first-born child, sired by him....but first she has to undergo the training.... and that's pretty horrific testing her both physically and mentally by the cruel couple that are in charge of it. They want to break and remake her but Gwynn  tries hard to keep some of herself inside. She blames Rogue all the while for sending her there, and not explaining more earlier, but later finds out that idyllic though everything look there's a darker side and even high Lords like him are constrained by, and afraid of,  some-one above them.I loved Rogue, even though he seemed not to help Gwynn it was still clear he wanted her. Fae lives are very long so what seems like a long time to us is just a blink for them. Gwynn has much to learn, about magic and about the rules governing the place she's in. She doesn't want to get pregnant either, that's not been in her plans, and though Rogue is sensual and seductive, and invading her dreams with erotic fantasies, she keeps reminding herself he's at fault for where she is now, and she won't be a party to creating a child with him, especially as she'd have to give it up and she has no idea of why its wanted. Learning the cost to things as she has, she knows there would be nothing good for the child in store.A magical book, and I was really keen to get book two - got that yesterday and have read it - and its perfect but now I want book three :)Priced at just 2.11 for 261 pages its a bargain and will definitely join my keepers file to be re read.Stars: cracking book - full five.