And now for my first book

I am reading a book recommended by my friend at The Ivory Tower Library. It is a fantasy novel. I use to read a lot of fantasy years ago but then I got hooked on mystery so it is rare that I go back and try something different. I am so happy that I am reading Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier. It takes me back to those days when I really loved this genre and now I realized that I have missed it. YAY! That gives me a whole new array of books to dive into. Happy happy happy!
Since I tried to tell my son about this book and got rolling eyeballs back at me while I described swans and starwort shirts, I'll spare you that and give you this professional description:
Juliet Marillier's intensely romantic first novel Daughter of the Forest takes the reader to an Ireland on the edge where history and fairy tale meet. Sorcha, seventh child of a seventh son, finds herself caught up in the manipulations of a wicked and sorcerous stepmother, the whims of faerie and the purely human evil of a fanatical British lord. Acts of kindness have the most terrible of consequences and people's strongest virtues are used against them. First volume of a trilogy, Daughter of the Forest is a stunning debut that takes one of the most moving of fairy stories and renders it in vivid painful detail--rarely have the day-to-day consequences of magic's demands been made so directly unpleasant. Sorcha is a figure of fortitude to stand with the great heroines of contemporary fantasy; she does what she has to and takes the consequences at every turn. The author creates a cast of worthy allies and enemies for Sorcha as she travels from a remote Irish fortress to the depths of a forest in a Britain caught between its Celtic and European identities. --Roz Kaveney