LitPick Review
On a cold and rainy day when the grey sky descended fog over the damp ground, a handsome man of twenty-four sees a young woman of about eighteen being carried out in a cage, her brown hair contrasting with her yellow dress. The sight of the young girl in captivity, shivering, dirty, and cold, moves the young man. He purchases her from her captors for six hundred Lyra and brings her home. Once at his benefactor's home, his kindness warms Gemma's heart, and her human emotions return to normal.
The next morning, as James and Gemma begin their journey to Timberville to find her parents, he tells her how his wife and daughter were killed by Alazaar's men several months ago, and Gemma freezes in her tracks. And when James says, "You remind me of her. Perhaps that is why I was so drawn to buy you yesterday. It's as if she was telling me to do so. I think you two could have been friends," it would melt a reader's heart.
They embrace the dangers of the road and escape from a close encounter with trouble to continue. They arrive at Gemma's village and see, "What was once a vibrant community is now ash and dead bodies. Smoke rises from the smolders of what once were homes filled with love and laughter. The entire village – gone."
As the duo walks out towards the cave, a possible hideout for Gemma's people, the story draws the readers like a powerful magnet.
Opinion:
For any book that is not of the current period, I look for a clue from the author about its placement in time. However, I didn't find one for this book and was slightly disappointed, though that was minor. Once I started reading the book, the issue was not there anymore.
The trick of writing good fiction is hooking the reader with the first few sentences; this book does exactly that. While reading it, scenes from ancient times floated in front of me, and the narratives in the first chapter let me feel the pain of the people who were captured and taken as slaves throughout history.
Once in James' house, Wimsatt beautifully describes how the hostile Gemma learns to trust the host over a few hours of interaction, showing the universal human emotion of how she recognizes the honest warmth of a human being, even a stranger.
At the start of their journey, Gemma's adverse reaction to James' suggestion that she has to wear a collar for her safety sounds so natural, and the moment she gets an opportunity, she takes out the collar from her neck and throws it to the ground with such emotion that is so touching.
I became so engrossed with the story that when they were stopped by the soldiers on their way to Timberville and had a close escape, I felt relief, too.
As the story progressed and the plot thickened, the magic of the story took over me, and I found it difficult to part with the book. It is a book worth reading for the magnificent tale the author tells. The constant back-and-forth change of POV disturbed me, but if you are not judgmental, not too critical of literature, and looking for a good story, this book is for you. Grab a copy, and you won't be disappointed.
