Siren's Song

     This is my favourite youth fiction series of the year - yes, in part because the third and final book is finally here, and I can at last breathe the fresh breath of completion and answers to all of my burning questions. But also because of Mary Weber's incredible imagination and the wonder and fascination she writes to life with her characters and worlds and quirks. She writes such a unique world with strange creatures and customs, suspense and action, and battles of sword and wit and elements. I have reviewed books one and two, Storm Siren, and Siren's Fury, somewhere on this blog, but I bring the series up again because of how much I enjoyed it.

     No spoilers.

     But there are some wonderful moments and battles and scuffles and scrapes, all from the perspective of the ever-angsty, ever-arduously edgy Nymia. If you are the kind of person who holds your anger and irritation inside - like me - Nym is a distinctly refreshing character, because she does quite the opposite. She acts as a kind of anger relief for me, actually. Her outbursts are numerous and humourous, and usually justified. They've been building up over a trilogy, so she has plenty to rage about.

     Every aspect of this series builds to a climax in this book - romantically, suspensefully, politically, characteristically - and Weber throws a beautiful, overwhelming apex at her readers in the span of a couple hundred pages. The protagonist, Nym, is an orphan who's been sold in and out of slavery all of her life until, in book one, she is purchased one final time. And her owner sets to turning her into a weapon - to use her for her fierce Elemental powers. In the process, Nym makes some of her first friends in life and finds her first love in the trainer assigned to her - Eogan - who turns out to be much more than he appears.

     Now in book three, their final fight will determine the course of her life - whether or not she lives, of course, and then, if she does, her status as a citizen of Faelen. There's a deal on the table for her and all slaves to be freed from bondage, and she'd throw herself to the bolcranes if she thought she'd let this chance pass her by.

     Delicious disaster and danger, glorious deliverance, and all the things I love from a good fantasy realm.

--Elise--

    For more information on Siren's Song by Mary Weber, visit our website here.