Fantasy Fiction Worth Reading

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Grant, I know you’re a big reader. I’m wondering what you have on your bedside table these days. I am a bookworm, a big one. My son and I are currently working our way through two of Brandon Sanderson’s series. I finished his Stormlight Archive, and I’m now in the sixth book of his Mistborn series. But today, I really wanted to talk about these two books I read written by Rebecca Ross. This is a duology of A River Enchanted and A Fire Endless.

These are set on the imaginary Scottish island of Cadence, and Ross weaves a tale of magic and intrigue and of deep-rooted legend. There are tragic events from two centuries ago that have split the island into east and west, with tartan-clad clans claiming each side and doing battle when the lines between the sides is crossed. It’s just woven through with all this Scottish myth and legend while still being a fairy tale place. And so in the first book, A River Enchanted, the character Jack Tamerlan comes back from the mainland after 10 years.

And as he becomes reacquainted with the island’s people and culture, we learn about its ancestral spirits and secrets where music has power and the wind carries gossip and stories. It’s very, very exciting. One of those secrets is that spirits won’t say what they know about the young girls that have gone missing. So it’s kind of a mystery plus fantasy fiction. At sequel, A Fire Endless builds upon this foundational folklore and then ignites their narrative with a lot more intensity and twist where islanders have to defend themselves against the spirit world and each other. It’s all really interesting stuff. I do read a lot of, you know, Pulitzer winners and Booker Prize winners and the also-rans from both lists, but I also enjoy this kind of genre fiction just because it’s always wonderful to sit down after a tired day and take pleasure in a world that somebody’s created. It sounds incredibly rich and colorful.

Yeah, Rebecca Ross has just breathed life into the Scottish lore that she’s borrowed and modified. And it’s just this vivid world.

And the overlap with the real world is seamless. It’s really well done.

And I love the specificity of the geography as well. I’d love to get over to Scotland.

And that sounds like a great thing to read in the meantime.

Yeah, the island is imaginary. But of course, there are plenty of wonderful Scottish islands in the Hebrides.

Well, give me that title again.

So this is the duology by Rebecca Ross, A River Enchanted and A Fire Endless.

We’ll put links to those titles on our website, and we’d love to know what you’re reading.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your favorite reads to words@waywordradio.org.