The Chronicle of Secret Riven
Keeper of Tales Trilogy: Book Two
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A girl with wondrous, hidden powers must find the courage to confront her destiny in this breathtaking sequel to The Mapmaker’s War, which New York Times bestseller Deborah Harkness called “an otherworldly tale that charts the all-too-human territory between heartbreak and hope.”
To see is a trick of the mind, but to believe is a trick of the heart.
Born to brilliant parents one thousand years after a great conflict known as The Mapmaker’s War, Secret Riven is an uncanny child who can mysteriously communicate with plants and animals. When her knowledge of an esoteric symbol brings unwelcome attention, gentle, watchful Secret finds acceptance from Prince Nikolas, her best friend, and Old Woman, who lives in the distant woods.
When Secret is twelve, her mother, Zavet, receives an arcane manuscript to translate. Zavet begins to suffer nightmares and withdraws into herself. Secret sickens with a fever and awakens able to speak an ancient language, in which her mother is also fluent. Suddenly, Zavet dies—and the manuscript is missing. The only clue left is a cipher for Secret to find. Soon, she will have a choice to make: confront a destiny tied to an ancient past or deny it, never to know its whole truth.
“With the cadence of a fairy tale and the sweeping scope of an epic” (Amy Shearn, author of The Mermaid of Brooklyn), The Chronicle of Secret Riven is a spellbinding tale of love and adventure, myth and legend, fate and free will—and an introduction to an unforgettable heroine.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This installment picks up 1,000 years after the events depicted in The Mapmaker's War, and it bears little obvious connection to its predecessor. In a sedate, leisurely manner, Domingue spins out the childhood and adolescence of the titular Secret Riven, daughter of a historian and a translator. Secret spends much of her early years mute but always listening, able to understand plants and animals. As she matures, she finds her words, excels in school, and makes friends with the dashing Prince Nikolas. One mystery remains: the origins of a manuscript given to Secret's mother for translation, and the reasons for its later disappearance. Lush descriptions and a mythic tone don't disguise this literary fantasy's lack of action, limited resolution, and paucity of concrete answers. It reveals its purpose reluctantly; in Secret's world, anything can happen, but little actually does.
