How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse
The Thorne Chronicles, Book 1
K. Eason
DAW
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: It has been two hundred years and more since a daughter was born to the royal Thorne family, head of a consortium of worlds with subjects human and alien, but despite having spread across the multiverse with a melding of magic (more commonly known these days as arithmancy) and technology, certain traditions must be upheld... such as the naming ceremony for a princess, and the customary invitations left in the garden for twelve fairies to bring their gifts - and, if one is strictly following protocol, the thirteenth fairy to bring her curse.
Nobody expected the fairies to actually exist, let alone accept the invitations - or to bestow gifts upon the girl. As for the curse... while the thirteenth fairy burdens her with the ability to always see through falsehoods to the truth beneath, that is far less a curse than the worlds at large contrive to throw at her, curses involving a spoiled younger brother, a ridiculous tradition preventing girls from inheriting the throne, and a war against a tyrant and regicide whose resolution demands she marry a weakling prince whom she only ever met once. But Rory Thorne isn't some helpless, mindless romantic of a princess; she's well aware that royalty is about politics, and politics is all too often about accepting poor bedfellows to keep the peace (and stave off even worse bedfellows). She travels to the space station capital of Tadesh fully intending to go through with the marriage... but things go wrong from the moment of her arrival, pointing to even greater and darker schemes afoot.
Unfortunately for her enemies, this damsel isn't anything like her pining ancestral namesake, waiting for a prince to rescue her from the palace of brambles. If anyone's going to be saving anyone, it's Rory Thorne. Too bad she may just have to destroy the peace and the multiverse to do it...
REVIEW: To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect when I downloaded this audiobook, save that the title promised fun and the premise - melding fairy tale tropes with a space opera plot - intrigued me. It quickly pulled me into its amusing yet detailed and interesting world, a mash-up that probably shouldn't work but somehow does in Eason's hands. With few exceptions, nobody in this story is just who or what they appear to be, with hidden motivations and layers to them. Rory was raised with a keen understanding of the politics of her position, and harbors no illusions about happily-ever-after endings for someone in her position, but that doesn't means he has to sit back and play her harp (one of the skills a fairy granted her, which turns out to be more useful than anticipated) while other people use her for their own gains. Between a half-cybernetic bodyguard and the royal vizier, not to mention a mother from a less male-dominated culture than her father, she received a rather progressive education, which she puts to good use when she finds herself thrust into the interstellar game board as someone else's pawn. The story rarely if ever lags, as Rory pits her wits against a scheming usurper who has already killed more than one monarch and will not hesitate to kill another to get the power he craves. Along the way, the narrative, written by an unnamed historian chronicler, adds several amusing asides and flourishes to the tale. When I finished, I hit Overdrive almost immediately to see if the second installment of the duology was available for download, but unfortunately there appears to be a wait list. Dang it...
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