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Zusatztext “A sweeping adventure saga as mystical as it is raw…this hypnotic tale of passion and survival will resonate with sophisticated readers of both sexes.” — Publishers Weekly ! starred review “A great piece of gritty! feminist fiction! distinguished by a heroine whose vulnerabilities and fresh voice as narrator make her easy to love.” — Booklist ! starred review “Gritty! sinewy! exceptionally well researched! and highly impressive.” — Kirkus Reviews “Engrossing! suspenseful and uncompromising! this is a novel that sets a great story into motion! leaving readers eager for the next chapter.…Its story is so complex and compelling that it will seduce even reluctant readers.”— SciFi Weekly ! A- pick “ ‘Expect the unexpected’ may sound like a stale cliché! but applied to the future volumes of this trilogy! and the future career of Sarah Micklem! it becomes both a lure and a promise.”— Locus! New & Notable Book “A fully realized world! full of grit and beauty! hungers of every kind! and gods who are either remote or meddlesome. She takes the time to let relationships develop and events unfold! giving us the sense of having lived and loved our way through Firethorn’s world. Micklem makes a worthy bid to be ranked with Robin Hobb! Mary Renault! and George R. R. Martin as a brilliant creator of realistic! character-centered fantasy. My only complaint is that the second book isn’t out yet.”—Orson Scott Card! author of Ender’s Game “This is a stark and splendid novel. But the most astonishing thing about it is the suppleness of the style–almost no one writes a first novel this graceful. I look forward to whatever she does next.”—Robin McKinley! author of Sunshine Informationen zum Autor Sarah Micklem Klappentext 71815833 Chapter 1 I took to the Kingswood the midsummer after the Dame died. I did not swear a vow, but I kept myself just as strictly, living like a beast in the forest from one midsummer to the next, without fire or iron or the taste of meat. I lived as prey, and I learned from the dogs how to run, from the hare how to hide in the bracken, and from the deer how to go hungry. I was then in my fifteenth year or thereabouts. I had been taken into the Dame’s household as a foundling, and when I came to a useful age, she made me her handmaid. I was as close to her side as a pair of hands, and as quick to do her bidding without a word having to be said. I stood high in her regard; many a daughter of the Blood is not so well regarded, being counted more a debt than a gain to her house until she is safely married and gone. When the Dame died, and her nephew and his new wife inherited the manor, I became just another drudge. The world had its order and I my place in it, but I could not whittle myself small enough to fit. In sorrow and pride I exiled myself to the Kingswood. I shunned fire for fear the kingsmen would hunt me down, and so by way of cold and hunger, I came near to refusing life itself. I never thought to anger or please a god by it. Sometimes I wonder if it was my stubbornness that caught the eye of Ardor, god of forge and hearth and wildfire. And sometimes I wonder–was it by my will alone that I fled to the Kingswood? Maybe Ardor had already taken me in hand, to test my mettle as armor is tested, under blows. I was not such a fool that I could go hungry in high summer, when the wild plum waited for the touch of my hand before letting go of the tree. I could put a name to each useful plant, I knew its favored ground and the most auspicious season and hour to seek it. The Dame had taught me all this when we’d ridden to the Kingswood to gather dyestuffs for her tapestries and herbs for healing or the table. By root and stem, flower and leaf, seed and fruit, she’d shown me how every plant was marked by the god who made it, that we might know its nature, whether be...
