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  • Writer's pictureMichelle

A Dragonbird in the Fern by Laura Rueckert


The Quick Cut: A young princess finds herself suddenly taking her older sister's place in a marriage after she is murdered. The newly married girl discovers that the person who killed her sister may be where her new husband is from. A Real Review: Thank you to North Star Editions for providing the ARC for an honest review. The fantasy genre can help us escape from the reality of life and go somewhere new, but what if that place isn't any more fantastical than reality? What if you still had all those same struggles and frustrations that bother you in the real world? In this story centered around a Princess named Jiara, she struggles with her new marriage along with her Dyslexia. Jiara is struggling to deal with her older sister's death - especially since it wasn't due to illness of any sort. Her sister was murdered. As if that's not enough to send her life off its planned course, she also quickly finds herself now in place of her older sister's planned future: as newly engaged in order to build important alliances. Now she is leaving home with her new husband, in a place where she doesn't know the language. While learning all the language and cultural details needed to embrace her new situation, she discovers something unexpected: that the person who killed her sister may be exactly where she is with her husband now. Will she find that her husband has more to do with the death of her sister than appears? Or will she find that she's not willing to know the truth that can make her current situation more volatile? I wanted to enjoy this story - especially since it seems to take the fantasy genre in a different direction. So often when authors write a fantasy book, they ditch or ignore so many details about things that we have to deal with in real life (such as disabilities). To see this one bring a part of that everyday struggle into this fictional place? It's nice to see something so simple change how a story is written or how the characters approach situations. That is the one thing that I think this book does well. It takes that struggle and turns it into a true plot point. However, it's not enough to save this one from being too flat. Although the story is quite lengthy, never at any point does the worldbuilding get detailed enough to make me feel like I can really imagine this place. Lots of details about languages and countries are thrown in, but never at any point is there enough of it to really make you feel like you're there. It feels too much like just page material instead of creating a new place. To add even more to the injury, I couldn't relate to Jiara as much as I should have. Her sister is dead, but I never really felt any deep sorrow or mourning from that painful experience from her. The closest she ever came to being relatable to me is when she was struggling to learn the language of her new environment. The way she's treated as she struggles to read and how her tutor doesn't approach learning in a way that works for her - it made me sympathize with her. She needed more of those relatable moments where she felt like more than just a character. She required more moments where I could see her as an actual person. A story with a unique setup that fails to viably create a whole new world of mystery. My rating: 2 out of 5

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