Raised to be a warrior, seventeen-year-old Eelyn fights alongside her Aska clansmen in an ancient, god-decreed rivalry against the Riki clan. Her life is brutal but simple: train to fight and fight to survive. Until the day she sees the impossible on the battlefield—her brother, fighting with the enemy—the brother she watched die five years ago.
Eelyn loses her focus and is captured. Now, she must survive the winter in the mountains with the Riki, in a village where every neighbor is an enemy, every battle scar possibly one she delivered. But when the Riki village is raided by a ruthless clan settling in the valley, Eelyn is even more desperate to get back to her beloved Aska clan, which is rumored to have been decimated by the same horde. She is given no choice but to trust Fiske, her brother’s friend who tried to kill her the day she was captured. They must do the impossible: unite the clans to fight together, or risk being slaughtered one by one. Driven by a love for her clan and her growing love for Fiske, Eelyn must confront her own definition of loyalty and find a way to forgive her brother while daring to put her faith in the people she’s spent her life killing.
I really enjoyed this book - far more than I expected to. The writing style suited the storyline perfectly, the romance was (blessedly) not overdone, and I was even brought to tears a few times. It's been quite a while since a book has done that.
The characters were human, in all their flaws and strengths. The main character, Eelyn, was a badass warrior - but also someone who felt that showing weakness of any kind was a flaw. It definitely encapsulates the brutality of living - and dying - by the sword, particularly when she is captured by her people's enemy.
This book, looking back, has a whiff of Romeo and Juliet to it - but only a whiff, mind. And that's all I will say about that, as to avoid giving any spoilers ;)
Overall, I was so pleasantly surprised by this book - and glad that I gave it a chance. It really won me over.
