2013 books: Shinn
Dec. 30th, 2013 06:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
melita66Mild spoilers for the first book in the Elemental Blessings series, Troubled Waters.
After a drought, I managed to finish two books fairly quickly. Sharon Shinn's new Elemental Blessings book, Royal Airs, continues the story of the people of Welce. In this country, people have an affinity for an element. For instance, coru is blood and water while elay is air and soul. A person is given three blessings at birth by strangers drawing tokens from a container in a temple. People will then drawn more tokens later to see what might be upcoming in their lives. Each trait/family has a prime who has extended powers. The new book, Royal Airs, takes place several years after the first book, Troubled Waters. In Royal Airs, the princess Josetta has settled into a life of good works by running a shelter in the slums of the capital city Chialto. She encounters a card shark (with a heart of gold), Rafe, after he rescues her step-sister (kind of, it's complicated), Corene.
Rafe has never had any blessings. His mother married a farmer when he was young and died with the birth of his half-brother. While Rafe thinks she was not from Welce, she never revealed where she was from or who his father was. When he or someone else pulls blessings, he always gets 'ghost coins', tokens that are so worn the blessing can't be read. As he gets more involved with Josetta, his past gets revealed.
Josetta was a minor character in the first book where the main character was Zoe Lalindar Ardelay, who ends up being the coru prime. She does appear in this book and it's nice to catch up with her. Rafe and Josetta are appealing characters, and Rafe's post-gambler profession is quite thrilling. I definitely look forward to more books in this series! After finishing it, I reread the first book which I had mostly forgotten.
After a drought, I managed to finish two books fairly quickly. Sharon Shinn's new Elemental Blessings book, Royal Airs, continues the story of the people of Welce. In this country, people have an affinity for an element. For instance, coru is blood and water while elay is air and soul. A person is given three blessings at birth by strangers drawing tokens from a container in a temple. People will then drawn more tokens later to see what might be upcoming in their lives. Each trait/family has a prime who has extended powers. The new book, Royal Airs, takes place several years after the first book, Troubled Waters. In Royal Airs, the princess Josetta has settled into a life of good works by running a shelter in the slums of the capital city Chialto. She encounters a card shark (with a heart of gold), Rafe, after he rescues her step-sister (kind of, it's complicated), Corene.
Rafe has never had any blessings. His mother married a farmer when he was young and died with the birth of his half-brother. While Rafe thinks she was not from Welce, she never revealed where she was from or who his father was. When he or someone else pulls blessings, he always gets 'ghost coins', tokens that are so worn the blessing can't be read. As he gets more involved with Josetta, his past gets revealed.
Josetta was a minor character in the first book where the main character was Zoe Lalindar Ardelay, who ends up being the coru prime. She does appear in this book and it's nice to catch up with her. Rafe and Josetta are appealing characters, and Rafe's post-gambler profession is quite thrilling. I definitely look forward to more books in this series! After finishing it, I reread the first book which I had mostly forgotten.
