Chantress Fury
Author: Amy Butler Greenfield
Series: Chantress Trilogy
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Release Date: May 19th, 2015
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
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The sea is coming. We are coming. And we will drown you all.With a song, Lucy can control the wind and the water; she can bring castles and kingdoms to their feet. Since Lucy mastered her powers, King Henry has kept her close as he’s rebuilt England. She’s his best ally—and his workhorse. And now he’s called her to investigate attempted murder: His men claim they were almost killed on the Thames…by a mermaid. All Lucy can glean from the creature they’ve captured is a warning: The sea is coming. We are coming. And we will drown you all.And then the floods begin. Swaths of London are submerged as the people scramble to defend themselves against the water—and the monsters—that are flooding their streets. As mistrust of Lucy’s magic grows, the king relies on Nat, Lucy’s great love, to guide them through the storm. But Nat is cold and distant to Lucy. He swore his love only a year before, and now he calls her “stranger.”Lucy is determined to defeat this powerful new magic alone if she must. But then she hears an eerie song within the water…can it mean that she’s not the last Chantress after all?Sweepingly romantic and crackling with magic, Chantress Fury triumphantly concludes the powerful Chantress trilogy.
Such an awesome conclusion to an awesome trilogy! If you love fantasy and haven’t picked up the first book of this series, Chantress, then I must ask you,
We start the book with a bit of a time skip, as Lucy has been at court for about a year since Chantress Alchemy. She’s been super busy helping out with King Henry, and the story really gets rolling when the court discovers a mermaid.
That’s when trouble starts brewing, and the magic in the story goes up to a whole new level. We discover a lot about the history of the chantress and how they came to be. I loved this aspect of the book! The author goes back and revisits Lucy’s mother as well as introduce other new characters to create a whole new dimension to this world. It adds a whole new depth as both the reader and Lucy discover parts of the past that made the chantress the way they are.
Lucy’s relationships with other characters were also explored in this book. Her friendship with Sybil, family ties with Norrie, and romantic entanglement with Nat were well thought out and made my heart warm throughout the chapters. While Lucy discovers more and more about her family’s past, she also discovers the person she wants to be in the world.
See the thing is, Lucy feels a bit ostracized. Sybil attends to her numerous ladies-in-waiting at court after marrying the king and everyone is afraid of the only chantress in the kingdom. However, she does a good job of not expressing her fears.
“Never mind, I told myself. You are strong enough to handle this. And I was. But as I stood looking at my men in the shadow of our victory, my loneliness went bone deep.”
But oh Nat. For most of the book, their relationship can pretty much be expressed with:
“I’d saved the person I loved from a life he would hate. I’d saved us both from a painful mistake. That had to be right.”
Like I said, they haven’t seen each other in a year so things are pretty tense. I think that the author handled their situation pretty well and quite realistically. Lucy wants what’s best for Nat, but in the end does she really know what’s best for him? She is doubtful, but don’t worry! I’m not going to say what happens to them in the end, but let’s just say the relationship status above is definitely changed for the better.
Overall a superb conclusion to the Chantress Trilogy! I would have loved to see more background of the characters of the other world introduced in this book, but what was in the book was still pretty satisfying. Other than that, loose strands are tied and the ending of this amazing trilogy left me with a warm smile.
Amy grew up in the Adirondack Mountains and later studied history at Williams College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Oxford. She now lives with her family in England, where she writes, bakes double-dark-chocolate cake, and plots mischief.
So the original publication date was the beginning of May, but it got pushed back to May 19. To appease all you impatient readers, here’s an excerpt from the book where Lucy first meets the mermaid…
The other men in the circle were now coming over to us—and one of them was Nat. For more than a year, I’d pretended that he meant nothing to me. Now, in the half-dark of this moonlit night, I stopped acting a part. I was simply myself, hungry for the sight of him.
The King’s right-hand man, Sybil had called him, and he looked it. He’d always had a quiet strength about him, but now that strength was in the open. Tall and sure and capable, he came toward me, and what I saw in his face made my heart hammer like a drum…
But then I caught sight of what had been at the center of the men’s circle, and my heart nearly stopped altogether. It was an enormous barrel, stood on its end. Just visible inside it was a woman, and she was gagged.
Seeing her, I felt sick. Gags and muzzles and scold’s bridles—until the King had come to the throne, these had all been common ways of stopping a woman’s tongue. Especially a Chantress’s tongue. My own godmother had been gagged before she’d been killed, and the memory filled me with horror.
“What’s going on here?” My voice was shaking with anger. “You’re gagging women and putting them in barrels?”
I could’ve asked the question of any of them. But it was Nat I was looking at.
Even in the dim light I saw his face change. When he answered, his voice was guarded, almost steely. “She isn’t a woman, Chantress. She’s a mermaid. And she’s gagged because she tried to kill us.”
PRIZES: Win (1) signed copy of Chantress Fury by Amy Butler Greenfield (INT)
Win (1) finished copy of Chantress Fury by Amy Butler Greenfield (US Only)
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