Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The Storyteller's Daughter by Cameron Dokey

Synopsis (from goodreads.com):

In a faraway kingdom, a king has been betrayed. Deeply hurt and bitterly angry, he vows never to be deceived again. Unfortunately, the king's plan to protect himself will endanger all of the realm's young women, unless one of them will volunteer to marry the king — and surrender her life.

To everyone's relief and horror, one young woman steps forward. The daughter of a legendary storyteller, Shahrazad believes it is her destiny to accept this risk and sacrifice herself.

On the night of her wedding to the king, Shahrazad begins to weave a tale. Fascinated, the king lets her live night after night. Just when Shahrazad dares to believe that she has found a way to keep her life — and an unexpected love — a treacherous plot will disrupt her plan. Now she can only hope that love is strong enough to save her.

Jillian’s Review:
I don’t like to be reminded over and over again that I’m reading a book and that I’m not actually in an exotic new world. It took me a while to get into this novel because Dokey kept a dialog between Shahrazad and the reader. Thankfully, these jolts out of contexts were brief and grew farther and father between stories and I was able to skip them when I came upon them. Once skipped, I was able to lose myself in this wonderfully written novel.

There are several stories told by Shahrazad which are meant to teach those whom she tells the stories to.

There was a healthy amount of romance and the characters are exotic and deep thinkers. There are so many stories throughout this novel, yet Dokey does a wonderful job of blending them together to make one great tale. I’m glad I pushed through the first few pages because I would have really missed out on a fantastic book.