Dreamer's Pool

by Juliet Marillier
Book 1 of Blackthorn & Grim

Dreamer's Pool, to be honest, while written well with Juliet Marillier's style of magic and lore, also sort of tended towards the predictable.  It's a usual plot device of Marillier's to give away the plot twist from one of the tales or stories told throughout the book.  And so it wasn't hard to figure out how everything would turn out in the end.

As has been quite typical of Marillier as well, this first book in the Blackthorn & Grim trilogy involved a lot of world building and set-up.  A lot of traveling happened, and I'm not entirely sure that things started picking up until about halfway through the book.  At least, for me, I didn't start getting really interested until halfway through the book.

So while I enjoyed the book, I still had a hard time with it, not only because of the slowness of the plotting, but also because of how hard it was to really relate with any of the characters.  Blackthorn tended towards more bitter than I felt like she needed to be, and I found I liked her more when she wasn't constantly thinking about how she could betray the new chance at life that Conmael gave her by going back to her need for revenge.  I didn't mind her being a cranky old wise woman (who was hardly old by biological age standards), and I liked her role as the local wise woman.

I'm much like Blackthorn in that I hate being crowded and I like my privacy.  But I think that, as much as Blackthorn and Grim seem to understand the way that the fey work their magic, they don't seem to understand that there might be a reason for the seven year restriction that Conmael has given her.  If Blackthorn went back for her revenge at this stage in her new chance at life, she'd probably just end up back in prison again.

Anyway, the only reason I even gave this book a higher rating anyway was because of the last half of the book.  It certainly did end up drawing me in all the way, and if only we could have stuck with Blackthorn's and Grim's POVs, I think I would have enjoyed the book in it's entirety a lot more.  I sincerely was more interested in their journey, and instead found Prince Oran kind of frustrating to follow.

I also found our "villian" more overpowered than was believable.  Lady Flidais's behavior was never acceptable nor was it normal, so I'm surprised that no one ever called her out on it, save for Oran in private.

Of course, without Oran's POV, there probably wouldn't be a whole lot of story.  Maybe if this book were written in third person, things might have been a bit different?

Nonetheless, the end of the book left me wanting more, and so I will definitely be jumping into the next book when I get the chance.

Halloween Bingo 2019

Blackthorn & Grim is a young adult high fantasy series written by Juliet Marillier.  She is one of my favorite high fantasy authors even though I've yet to read all of her work.  Mainly, her writing is beautiful and magical.

Den of Wolves, the last book in this trilogy, was published and made available this week, and so I thought, what better way to celebrate than squee about how pretty the covers for all three books are.  Fantasy novels tend to have a lot of really good cover illustrations, and the Blackthorn & Grim trilogy is no different.  And while I've always liked most of the covers for Juliet Marillier books, I can't say that any have ever actually stood out as much to me.

But the three of these covers, from the illustration to the type setting, it's all just so pretty that I can't stop looking at them.  Specifically Den of Wolves--it was the one that drew my attention the fastest, more than likely because of the bold red background.

The last time I started a Juliet Marillier fantasy trilogy, I breezed through one book after another and had the entire series finished in no time.  So this time, I decided that I would patiently wait out the publication of the last book before even trying to get a hold of the first.

I feel I've become quite impatient in my old age to wait around to finish an ongoing story, and this whole trilogy thing that's been going on is a bit frustrating sometimes.