num_pages: 560
description: Juliet Marillier's intensely romantic first novel Daughter of the Forest takes the reader to an Ireland on the edge where history and fairy tale meet. Sorcha, seventh child of a seventh son, finds herself caught up in the manipulations of a wicked and sorcerous stepmother, the whims of faerie and the purely human evil of a fanatical British lord. Acts of kindness have the most terrible of consequences and people's strongest virtues are used against them. First volume of a trilogy, Daughter of the Forest is a stunning debut that takes one of the most moving of fairy stories and renders it in vivid painful detail--rarely have the day-to-day consequences of magic's demands been made so directly unpleasant. Sorcha is a figure of fortitude to stand with the great heroines of contemporary fantasy; she does what she has to and takes the consequences at every turn. The author creates a cast of worthy allies and enemies for Sorcha as she travels from a remote Irish fortress to the depths of a forest in a Britain caught between its Celtic and European identities. --Roz Kaveney
language: English
title: Daughter of the Forest
titlecomplete: Daughter of the Forest  (Sevenwaters, #1)
characters: Eilis, Hugh of Harrowfield, Lord Colum, Simon Holt, Margery, Lady Anne, John (divers), Diarmid, Benedict of Greystones, Richard of Northwoods, Lady Oonagh, Finbar, Fat Janis, Liam the God, Cormack, Seamus Redbeard, Father Brian, Padriac, Sorcha
genres: Fiction, Historical, Retellings, Magic, Young Adult, Romance, Adult, Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Fairy Tales
ratings_count: 63653
series: Sevenwaters
awards: awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Locus Award
category: Best First Novel, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: ALA Alex Award, awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Aurealis Award
category: Fantasy Novel
publisher: HarperCollins