Myrren's Gift

by Fiona McIntosh

Reviewed by Coral

With the death of his father, young Wyl Thrisk is thrust into power as General of [?]'s armies. He desires only to ensure his sister's happiness and to be a loyal subject to King Magnus. Part of this is obeying Magnus’ wish for Wyl to become a close friend to Magnus’ son and heir, Prince Celimus. Celimus’ cruelty does not make it easy for Wyl, who nonetheless tries to do as his king commands.

When a woman suspected of witchcraft is brought to the capital for execution, Wyl finds himself in place to offer her a brief moment of compassion that will forever change his life.

With Celimus determined to torment Wyl and all those that he loves, it may be the gift that Wyl unknowingly received from this witch, Myrren that will save him and his kingdom.

I could not finish this book. I was just never able to connect with any of the characters or to be drawn into the book’s world. For the first hundred or so pages, I found myself wondering if some of the sentences in the book would work better with more commas instead of caring about any of the characters.

TCelimus just seemed like one big cliché of cruel, despotic ruler. There was no depth there, at least up until the point that I read. He was cruel to be cruel. That was actually a little disappointing, because I think with the backstory introduced about his parents, there was a possibility that he could have been a more multi-layered villain.

I found it strange that Magnus and Celimus both based their impressions on the princess of a neighboring country from one encounter they had with her when she was a child. People change a lot from when they are children. Did no one have any spies in place? Or rumours of the person she had grown up to be? And then her father actually mentions spies at some point, but it seems like his sucked, because they had no clue how cruel Celimus could be, which is hardly a secret.

I was confused about Myrren’s gift, though that could be because I didn’t finish the book. I don’t understand why she couldn’t use it to save herself and why Wyl was able to use it when she couldn’t.

Just when I thought the plot was actually starting to move, Wyl decides that instead of doing anything useful to prevent a war he is going to go track down a fortune teller he met once. So he goes off and has all these stupid side-adventures, while leaving the important stuff to a child and a dog. This is when I decided to stop reading.

I want to grade it an F, because of how much I disliked it, but I didn’t even make to the halfway point, so I guess that grading might be unfair.

Grade: N/A