Mary’s review of Troubled Waters by Sharon Shinn.
Zoe Ardelay receives astonishing and unwelcome news: she has been chosen to become the king’s fifth wife. Forced to go to the royal city, she manages to slip away and hide on the shores of the mighty river.
It’s there that Zoe realizes she is a coru prime ruled by the elemental sign of water. She must return to the palace, not as an unwilling bride for the king, but a woman with power in her own right. But as Zoe unlocks more of the mysteries of her blood-and the secrets of the royal family-she must decide how to use her great power to rise above the deceptions and intrigue of the royal court.
When we first meet Zoe, she’s just lost her father and is completely devastated. Since they’ve been exiled, he’s been the center of her world for so long, she doesn’t know what she’s going to do. Then Damien Serlast shows up at her front door, says she’s to marry the king and whisks her off to the city.
I wasn’t sure what to make of Zoe. At first, she’s so muffled by grief, she has no personality. Then, when it finally penetrates her brain that she’s being married off, she wakes up, realizes she doesn’t want to be added to the king’s stable of wives, and jumps ship (so to speak). From there, her personality starts to emerge, a little bit anyway. She lives by the river for a while, finds out she’s the coru prime and head of her family, heads to the family homestead, stays there for a while, still drifting through life and staring pensively into the river. The only time she seems to show any spark is when Damien’s around. He gets her all fired up.
Their romance develops very slowly, especially since she spends much of her time avoiding him. I really wanted to see more of the two of them together. Couples who challenge one another and who make each other think are my favorite types. There wasn’t nearly enough Zoe-Damien interaction.
Even though the romance didn’t do it for me, I did love the world building in this novel. Zoe’s society revolved around blessings. The blessings they got at birth influenced them throughout their lives and, whenever they needed guidance or support, they’d pull random blessings to see what path to take. As coru prime, Zoe’s strengths revolve around water and blood, influencing most of the decisions she makes. This includes some very questionable actions, where she seems to have no control over what she does and doesn’t seem to care about anything but the end result. The lack of repercussions for her actions left me a little baffled.
Beautiful world building and gorgeous writing redeem this novel somewhat but I prefer a heroine with a little more oomph and more romance.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
This book is available from ACE. You can buy it here or here in e-format.
I do wanna read this one 🙂 Sounds cool.