The Traitor's Daughter [Paperback]

Paula Brandon (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 4, 2011

Here’s the beginning of a lush, epic, wholly original new trilogy that shines with magic, mystery, and captivating drama.

On the Veiled Isles, ominous signs are apparent to those with the talent to read them. The polarity of magic is wavering at its source, heralding a vast upheaval poised to alter the very balance of nature. Blissfully unaware of the cataclysmic events to come, Jianna Belandor, the beautiful, privileged daughter of a powerful Faerlonnish overlord, has only one concern: the journey to meet her prospective husband.  But revolution is stirring as her own conquered people rise up against their oppressors, and Jianna is kidnapped and held captive at a rebel stronghold, insurance against what are perceived as her father’s crimes.

The resistance movement opens Jianna’s eyes―and her heart. Despite her belief in her father’s innocence, she is fascinated by the bold and charming nomadic physician and rebel sympathizer, Falaste Rione—who offers Jianna her only sanctuary in a cold and calculating web of intrigue. As plague and chaos grip the land, Jianna is pushed to the limits of her courage and resourcefulness, while virulent enemies discover that alliance is their only hope to save the human race.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Rich world-building, relentless pacing . . . an impressively imaginative epic . . . While the revolutionary and romantic threads are engaging, it is [Paula] Brandon’s multilayered narrative that makes this novel such an immersive reading experience.”—Publishers Weekly

“Compellingly complex motivations and character dynamics mark Paula Brandon’s welcome debut.”—Jacqueline Carey, New York Times bestselling author of Naamah’s Kiss

“A flawless all-round performance . . . Here’s a story to enwrap, enchant, and sweep you away.”—Richard Harland, author of Worldshaker
 
“Paula Brandon’s The Traitor’s Daughter is a dark, rich feast, rife with plagues, kidnappings, political intrigues, bloody crimes, bloodier revenges, arcane upheavals, and the threat of zombies.”—Delia Sherman, author of Changeling

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Spectra; Original edition (October 4, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553583808
• ISBN-13: 978-0553583809
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.9 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #538,152 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Confusing fantasy and completely unexpected September 6, 2011

By A Book a Day TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I can hardly figure out how to write a review for this book. Shame on Amazon for categorizing it in the romance genre. If you're judging a book by it's cover, it is not a historical romance with magical abilities and the intriguing synopsis essentially covers the first chapter and the last chapter in what will clearly be at least a three book saga that falls into a confused fantasy genre. It was over 400 pages and essentially everything in between has to attempt to lay the foundation of magical houses, amphibian races, major betrayals, deceit, murder, and political power plays that aren't as interesting as you'd think they'd be. I'll do my best to explain it, but if you choose to proceed, the prologue definitely throws you for a loop right off, with a prophecy and a robot, meanwhile people are traveling on horseback and weilding swords.

Jianna Belandor is a strong willed 18 year old girl who is leaving her home to meet her betrothed. Completely smitten and trusting of her father, she doesn't realize she has to leave their city because her father is despised by everyone. All she sees is a wonderful, adoring and honorable man, but we as the reader know better. Half way through her 3 day journey, she's kidnapped and all her bodyguards, aunt and maid are slaughtered before her eyes. She chooses to fight and she is beaten unconscience. When she wakes, she learns that she's to be married to the murdering thug who killed her family, kidnapped her and beat her senseless as an act of revenge since her father allegedly killed his father and ruined their family's lives. Buying time by agreeing to the ruse, Jianna manages to escape only to be found by Falaste Rione, a doctor and loyal ally with her kidnappers.... He takes her back thinking things can't be that bad for her only to learn slowly but surely that her betrothed is chomping at the bit to rape and torture her and he can't simply sit back and let it happen.

Meanwhile, her father is dealing with political intrigue in addition to finding his daughter, magical families are recognizing signs of an upcoming apocalypse, and if the prophecies are true, hated enemies are going to have to work together if they're going to try and save mankind.

Needless to say, there's a lot going on in this book and I have to admit that I wasn't always caught up in the spell of it. About half of the book was world building, political espionage, and signs of the world altering, and the other half focused on Jianna, who starts out naive and spoiled but is slowly accepting that her father is not the beloved man she thought he was. When the series is done, I believe that it will have a nice balance and great story to tell, but as a standalone book, it was simply too depressing. For the feint of heart, a dog is bludgeoned to death and Jianna is constantly being beaten, kicked, punched, slapped...for pretty much the whole book... with the looming threat of rape hanging over her head with every breath. Definitely not feel good material and there's no triumphant moment to lighten the mood. I thought for sure Jianna would have some magical ability to get her out of the mess she finds herself in, but no dice, which makes me wonder why the book is even named for her since her value is truly unknown to me. Oddly enough, it ends on a note that could compel me to read the rest of the series since it finally brings us into threat of mankind epic territory, but as a standalone book, I struggled to get through it. Read more ›

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Not what you expect, and that's a good thing November 9, 2011

By Justin Landon

Format:Paperback

Happy Halloween! I figure since it's Halloween I ought to review a novel with some kind of horror element. Well let's see, The Traitor's Daughter, "is a dark, rich feast, rife with plagues, kidnappings, political intrigues, bloody crimes, bloodier revenges, arcane upheavals, and the threat of zombies." Zombies! Perfectly Halloween or so the writer of that blurb would have me think. Unfortunately, my quest to review something horror was a complete failure. While there is something akin to zombies in the novel, albeit not in a traditional sense, they manage to only garner 10-20 pages of 'screen' time. As much of a red herring as 'zombies' are, it's nothing compared to the outward appearance of Paula Brandon's debut novel which reflects almost nothing of what she actually wrote.

See, Traitor's Daughter just doesn't look like the kind of novel I would enjoy. I try not to read reviews before I pick-up a novel, it's hard to articulate my thoughts clogged up by other people's, but I wasn't going to read Brandon's novel blind. To allay my fears I sneaked a peak at the Goodreads reviews to get a feel before giving it a shot. Quite a few of the reviews were lukewarm or negative in large part based on the incorrect assumption that Brandon's novel was historical fantasy romance - which was music to my ears. Looking at the cover and the overt Jacqueline Carey blurb, I think those expectations were reasonable. So much so that Amazon filed it under Romance.

At first glance, Traitor's Daughter looks like Gone with the Wind at best and Fabio on the Plantation (pretty sure I made that one up) at worse. The long flowing dress, the articulated 'D', and soft blend of a house emerging from a cloud with star pinpricks all over, screams: this is a book for CHICKS!... Unfortunately the back cover (below) isn't much better. Seriously go read it.

Are you back? Good. So, other than the first sentence and the last clause of the last sentence, Traitor's Daughter sounds like a romance story between the kidnapped Jianna and the healer Rione. It's not. Brandon debut is high fantasy with a sprawling plot, political machinations, complex systems of magic, all of which manifest themselves in themes that both men and women will very much enjoy. To someone looking for romance they're going to be sorely disappointed.

That's not to say there isn't a love story - there is sort of - but it's far more in-line with what a typical fantasy reader would expect in a non-Joe Abercrombie novel. All told, it probably occupies a quarter of the novel leaving the rest of the time for Brandon to flesh out Magnifico Aureste Belandor, Jianna's father. The fact his name isn't even mentioned in the novel's blurb boggles me. Most of the novel is spent on his ongoing political struggle to rescue his daughter without destroying his tenuous position as a Faerlonnish lord ruled by the Taerleezi conquerors.

The society of the Veiled Isles is one akin to Apartheid. An ethnic minority (Taerleezi) rules by way of conquest, oppressing the indigenous population (Faerlonne) and elevating those few willing to work for them. Those elevated have become a lightening rod to their oppressed brethren diverting much of the unexpressed anger and resentment from the true oppressors. Aureste, one of these 'betrayers' has spent his life securing his house's place under the Taerleezi government. He has hidden his activities from his daughter, sheltered her, and now she'll pay for his crimes. Brandon examines the lengths to which a father will go to protect his child as well as the sins a child's unconditional love can ignore.

A distinct lack of moral certitude permeates Traitor's Daughter. Aureste and his daughter's captors both feel wronged and view there causes as right and just. To them the ends always justify the means. Jianna and Rione, representing the next generation, become Brandon's moral center, setup to become the reformer of their predecessors whom are stuck in the memory of past wrongs and outdated world views. It all works spectacularly well creating an emotional investment not just in the characters, but in the political and familial structures Brandon puts in place.

If there's one black mark, aside from its marketing, it's that much of Traitor's Daughter feels like a prologue to a larger arc. The novel is framed by chapters from Grix Orlazzu, an arcane practitioner who's clearly pegged to the larger story line of the world's wavering magic. His chapters demonstrate a state of technological advancement that is far ahead of that present in the rest of the world. Jianna and Aureste's narrative only tangentially touch on this framing, leaving me to wonder how everything is connected, a fact that's a little frustrating having finished a third of trilogy. Given that the series is already completed and on an accelerated release timetable, I'm willing to give Brandon a pass despite my strong preference for every novel to have a beginning, middle, and end.

This is a long review that does a bit of a disservice to Brandon's novel. As a novel, I definitely recommend it. It's unquestionably one of the better fantasy debuts this year and the series holds a lot of promise. I compare it favorably to Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet (not quite that good) for its audacity to write a fantasy series that focuses on politics instead of war without relying on the crutch of romance and sex. Fans of epic fantasy that enjoy a slow build, ambitious world building, and political intrigue will absolutely eat it up.

In terms of marketing, I have to give it a big F. It's not romance, or horror (zombies, ha!), or steampunk, or science fiction, or pure fantasy - it's a mix of all them making Traitor's Daughter a genre novel, but one that's hard to pigeonhole in a business that demands the opposite. There's a possibility the next two installments are a lot more romance that the first. But somehow the skeptic in me thinks that branding the novel as romance was a conscious choice and I find it a bit intellectually dishonest.

Long story short: buy the book, read it, and ignore the cover and the reviews that have a lot more to do with a poorly conceived presentation than any failing of Paula Brandon's. The sequel, The Ruined City, is due out in early 2012 with the third installment to follow before year's end. I look forward to spending a lot more time in the Veiled Isles. Read more ›

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not quite what I expected September 4, 2011

By Jennifer Rothwell VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

After reading the synopsis of this novel I eagerly anticipated it's arrival. However the first few chapters caught me off guard a little, as they were a curious blend of futuristic fantasy and a more 'old-fashioned' style of fantasy, complete with Lords and Ladies ("Magnificos/Magnificas"), the fashion sense of older times, horses and carriages used as transportation, and other such things. The presence of what is basically a robot in the initial chapter is what created my impression of a futuristic novel, and I'll admit I was happy when the robot faded out of the story early on in the novel (it did return much later, but never became a major part of the novel).
The introduction of the 'Sishmindri'--basically a slave race of two-legged lizard-like creatures--was something I also found a little strange. Their presence really didn't add an awful lot to the novel, and so I was inclined to wonder how their being anphibian creatures had any purpose other than because the author wanted to include a slave-race in her novel. However this is of course the first novel in a trilogy and so the purpose of the Sishmindri may yet be revealed in one of the future novels.
Of course, it's not that I didn't realize that this novel was fantasy when I ordered it, it's just that it wasn't quite the type of fantasy novel that I expected. The theme of magic in this novel intrigued me, and I suppose I was under the impression that it was to be the type of magic inherent within novels such as Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon series, which is distinctively different to the type of magic in this novel. The use of the 'arcane energy' as it is termed reminded me of something out of a role-playing video game, which made it sort of flat and empty, and not something beautifully woven by it's castor.... To be honest it made the magical seem almost mundane.
However, all of this is not to say that the novel had no good points. Once I was able to look past these drawbacks I actually came to enjoy the central storyline of Jianna and her doctor-saviour, Rione. Their relationship was slow to emerge and it made for an interesting read. Watching the effects that they each had on the other was particularly enjoyable, and I feel as though this novel built the foundations for a future relationship of mutual respect and admiration. Both of these characters were complex and three-dimensional, and very well created by the author. It was because of these two characters that I kept turning the pages, wanting to read more of their journey. It is a shame that the novel ended on such a cliff-hanger, as I desire to read more about their journey and it is only this that would make me continue onto the next novel in the trilogy. Read more ›