Prophecy

3.7 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review

“Never attack in anger,” he whispered, his lips so close to her ear that she could feel his breath on her skin. “And never start a fight you can't win.”

Prophecy is an updated and revised fantasy story (The Gypsy King) that follows a girl trying to fight destiny and the way it pulls and pushes her into dire consequence situations. We first meet Persephone as a shackled enslaved late teens girl who is trying to protect chickens from a boy a little older than her that is trying to steal them. When Azriel gets a look at her face in the moonlight, he seems to know her and wants her to come with him, which Persephone refuses. Only to have Azriel show up the next night impersonating a lord and buys her. This sets her off on a journey where she constantly tries to find ways to break away for her freedom but is shackled not in chains this time, but to the seemingly workings of an old prophecy.

Once, she'd believed the prophecy of the Methusian king to be nothing more than the wishful thinking of a hunted people. Now she knew it was a death sentence for all those it touched.

In almost the opposite of an info dump, this first book in The Fractured Kingdoms series, takes it's time, and doesn't get there for some aspects, in introducing readers to this fantasy land. After a prologue that introduces readers to a Methusian seer who gives us a prophecy of a Methusian king that will reunite the clans of Glyndoria right before she's attacked and killed, the next chapter jumps us fifteen years later. As we follow Persephone and Azriel on their road trip, the worldbuilding gets placed in here and there with the gist of it being that there are four clans who make up this world, a boy king of the Erok clan is currently crowned but as he's not quite eighteen yet, his regent Mordesius runs things. Mordesius has a deformed body from a fire and is mad for the legend of a Methusian magical pool that could heal his body, he also hunts Methusians not only to torture them for their knowledge but to kill the children for their blood, thinking that has healing powers too. The advertisement of this saying it's like the Princess Bride and Game of Thrones kind of fits, you'll get light and goofy with Persephone and her animals that follow her but some gruesome killing and torture with a wanna be Little Finger in Mordesius.

“I do not believe that the Fates will allow you to refuse. I believe that a path stretches out before us, Persephone, and though I cannot say exactly where it will lead, I would stake my life on the certainty that we are meant to walk it together, come what may.”

Most of this first book in the series is more of a meet and greet to learn the players and set them in their roles. Persephone will annoy at times with her bratty determination that doesn't always make sense, she wants to escape Azriel and the Methusian prophecy they think she has a part in, but escape to what? Persephone never really has a plan just a “I want to be free” that feels forced to keep her apart from Azriel. Their budding romance had moments, they have some sweet and heated teasing between each other, but it definitely felt in the lighter young adult realm that this is categorized in. In the second half where the prophecy has them headed to the capitol to rescue a Methusian boy, along with an added girl Rachel who looks a lot like Persephone and no one is sure who the prophecy is about, the story started to feel a little dragged out. We get point-of-views from the other side, Mordesius, to further the overarching plot, but there was still not enough moved along for me.

I enjoyed this because of the cute chemistry between Azriel and Persephone but Persephone's insistence in wanting to “escape” when it didn't quite make sense, had me frustrated with her a lot of the time. This first installment delivered on some answers but a lot still isn't clear and with a sudden cliffhanger, I find myself wanting to start the second in the series right away. This was at turns cute, goofy, gruesome, and had fun back and forth chemistry, I just wanted Persephone to accept she could be a heroine in a fantasy story more readily.