BOOK REVIEW
This is book one of a series called The Branded Season.
Award-winning author and short story writer Jo Riccioni has managed to craft a speculative, high concept, epic tale with explosive ideas around gender, class and conflict, quick-fired narrative and pace, without that sickly prescriptive unrealistic serving of romance.
That is not to say there is no love here, but this one is a genuine pleasure to discover in a rich setting, with an intriguing fallible protagonist who values human life.
Isfalk is divided into two classes: the Branded who are vulnerable to all diseases; and the Pure who are bigger, stronger, immune to any disease and superior in all things.
Orphaned twins Nara and Osha are sequestered to the citadel, where their unbranded skins entitle them to a life of privilege, and to become precious breeding stock.
But the Branded are on the rise, revolution is coming, and the girls are caught up in their prophecies.
Nara itches to escape her confines and return to the Fornwood where she and her sister grew up, but when she is forced to run, she discovers that there is more at stake than just her own life.
In a world where women are traded as commodities, who can she trust in the lands beyond the Fornwood?
Forced to accept the help of a mysterious southern Brand known only as the Wrangler, Nara discovers the latent power lying dormant in the uncanny ability she has had since her childhood.
There is something engaging about the immediacy of Nara’s first-person narration and her impulsive, passionate character that makes this book hard to put down.
There are some very deliberate parallels to our own society, with a magical, medieval-inspired, apocalyptic world bearing the scars of a past plague.
Even if you never want to hear the word ‘pandemic’ again, this doesn’t detract from the pleasures of the genre on offer here.
I did have a minor gripe; I wish we had gotten dual perspectives to add dimension to the plot and fully flesh out the characters.
Because Nara is cagey and mistrusting, we only ever see through her harsh lens how the world is and should be.
This book has a great plot and pace and is a celebration of powerful women.
Also, the covers of the book are superb.
Julie Chessman
