![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This YA fantasy set in an ancient Egypt-ish land has an absolutely crackerjack opening. The heroine Mirany, a very junior attendant to the Oracle, must ceremonially carry a shallow bowl of live deadly scorpions to the current ruler. If any escape and sting her, she dies. Her walk with the scorpions is incredibly vivid and tense, as is the scene in which we find that the ruler has his own test: stick his hand in the bowl and see if they sting him, which he has to do because he’s supposed to bring rain and there hasn’t been any for ages.
Before he takes his test, he unexpectedly slips Mirany a note telling her that the Oracle is untrustworthy. And so she gets enmeshed in a web of politics, treachery, magic, and actual Gods. Mirany and a male character her age, Seth the scribe, are fairly standard YA protagonists, and the villains are your basic villains. Some of the supporting cast, however, are really interesting: a boy who is part ordinary child and part ancient God and part reincarnation of the former ruler, the alcoholic musician who was devoted to the man he was pre-reincarnation, the albino (not evil, for once) who lives underground in a self-made papier-mache palace.
I liked this way more than Fisher’s much more well-known book, Incarceron. The characters were more interesting, and everything involving the Gods and their rituals was inventive, eerie, and magical-feeling. I also appreciated the near-total lack of romance in this book though I can see it brewing between Seth and Mirany in future books. I may read them anyway, for the world and the supporting characters and the Gods.
The Oracle Betrayed: Book One of The Oracle Prophecies
Before he takes his test, he unexpectedly slips Mirany a note telling her that the Oracle is untrustworthy. And so she gets enmeshed in a web of politics, treachery, magic, and actual Gods. Mirany and a male character her age, Seth the scribe, are fairly standard YA protagonists, and the villains are your basic villains. Some of the supporting cast, however, are really interesting: a boy who is part ordinary child and part ancient God and part reincarnation of the former ruler, the alcoholic musician who was devoted to the man he was pre-reincarnation, the albino (not evil, for once) who lives underground in a self-made papier-mache palace.
I liked this way more than Fisher’s much more well-known book, Incarceron. The characters were more interesting, and everything involving the Gods and their rituals was inventive, eerie, and magical-feeling. I also appreciated the near-total lack of romance in this book though I can see it brewing between Seth and Mirany in future books. I may read them anyway, for the world and the supporting characters and the Gods.
The Oracle Betrayed: Book One of The Oracle Prophecies
