OK, technically I started reading Cyndere’s Midnight at the tail end of 2009, but I read most of it these first five days of 2010. I can’t say too much because I’ll be interviewing the author, Jeffrey Overstreet, for The Curator. But what I can say is that I loved this book, giving it 5/5 stars on Goodreads.
When I started reading its prequel, Auralia’s Colors, I had a hard time getting into the groove of Overstreet’s writing style at first. It was unfamiliar to me. I couldn’t just zip through each page. I had to read slowly and meditate on the otherworldly details of House Abascar and the Expanse. Northchildren and the Keeper. King Cal-marcus and the ale boy. Maugam and the Beastmen. Firewalkers, stonemasters, and wildspeakers. I’d never read a character like Auralia, a mysterious crafter of colors. She not only perplexed me, but also her fellow characters in the book. But somewhere in the poetic prose of chapter 2, I swooned.
The child became twigs and burnt autumn leaves, thin and fisty fingers clutching acorns and seeds as though they were stolen jewels. Her hair hung in tangles, silver and brown like the bark of apple trees. Her smile sealed off secrets. Each day she made a hurried journey to see as much of the world as she could bear and to harvest a small gallery of souvenirs.
The Gatherers saw her travels in her eyes, for wherever she went, they absorbed colors. She drank in the forest’s full spectrum – green pheasant feathers, wild purple lilacs, red fur of lurkdashers, and dandelions both sun yellow and wisp white. When she appeared among the grumbling, half-awake workers in the morning, her eyes glinted emerald, ringed with red, remnants of the sunrise. Sometimes they reflected that light late into the afternoon.
It’s kind of like Tolkien – until you’ve cracked open Lord of the Rings, you’ve never read anything like it, but boy, how quickly you love to get lost in that world filled with darkness, yet so much light. And so it is with Cyndere’s Midnight, which is a story about Cyndere, the heiress of House Bel Amica befriending, of all creatures, a Beastman named Jordam. Cyndere and her late husband, Deuneroi, shared a dream of healing the cursed Beastmen, and this redemption begins to unfold in her unlikely friendship with Jordam. She realizes that the magic of Auralia’s colors kindled a conscience deep within his violent appetites. And so did a mysterious well where they meet in secret – away from the protective demands of Cyndere’s royal position, and away from Jordam’s evil brothers.
And similar to Tolkien’s Two Towers, an epic battle occurred in which King Cal-raven and the remnant of Abascar strive to defeat a horde of Beastmen against all odds. The book leaves you hanging in mystery and suspense and a longing for a sealing of redemption – the way their world ought to be.
I grow very fond of fantasy the more I read books of this caliber. As a Christian, I believe in the supernatural, a whole other world I cannot see or barely imagine, yet I believe it exists without a doubt. So it seems wonderfully natural to be lured into the fantasy world of House Bel Amica, the Blackstone Caves, Cragavar Forest, and Tilianpurth. I’ve created these places in my mind as if I could travel by sea to meet the complex characters of Cyndere and Jordam.
I cannot wait to read the next book in this series – Raven’s Ladder (February 16, 2010). King Cal-raven is one of my favorite characters. And surprisingly, so is Jordam. I’m anxious to read the next steps of their journeys. Then I can share more of my thoughts in the interview, and better yet, the author’s thoughts himself.
To be continued . . .
[...] books down; fifty to go. I feel like Jenni, that I cheated a bit because I started one before the new year. The other I began on New [...]
I can’t wait to read your interview!!!
It will be a fun interview! … I love how I said that I couldn’t say too much here, but then I said quite a bit. Oh, well. I loved Cyndere’s Midnight, can’t you tell?