Chrysanthe
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Christine, the princess and heir to the real world of Chrysanthe, is kidnapped as a small child by a powerful magician and exiled in a Made World that is a version of our present reality. In exile, supervised by her strict "uncle"(actually a wizard in disguise), she undergoes bogus memory recovery therapy, through which she is forced to remember childhood rape and abuse by her parents and others. She is terribly stunted emotionally by this terrifying plot, but at seventeen discovers it is all a lie. Christine escapes with a rescuer, Sir Quentin, a knight from Chrysanthe, in a thrilling chase across realities.
Once home, the magical standoff caused by her exile is broken, and a war begins, in spite of the best efforts of her father, the king, and his wizard, Melogian. And that war, which takes up nearly the last third of the work, is a marvel of magical invention and terror, a battle between good and evil forces that resounds with echoes of the great battles of fantasy literature.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Canadian literary editor Meynard's first English-language novel since 1999's The Book of Knights is a tangled philosophical story of a kidnapped princess returned to her throne. Teen Christine has spent years in a world much like modern Earth, where a psychologist convinces her that she was abused by her absent father. Then Quentin, a knight of the world Chrysanthe, rescues her and tells her she's a princess. Ruled by a supernatural Law as immutable as Earth's laws of physics, Chrysanthe is a mystery to Christine. Her life is complicated by her instilled aversion to her father, King Edisthen, and the challenge presented by Evered, her abductor, whose father was king until the Law deposed him. Meynard creates a complex cosmology that is at once many-layered and precise, but few of the characters reveal enough depth to keep readers engaged, and exciting events are buried in poetic language.