This is an excellent re-telling of the fairytale of the six brothers turned into swans and their silent determined sister who painfully weaves six shirts to free them from the spell, recast into an Irish setting (it was originally a Germanic fairytale, I believe). Even though it is labelled as Book 1 of a trilogy, Daughter of the Forest is a complete story – to my relief, since imagine the padding to make it last over three 650-page books!

In many ways, because of the setting and the silent heroine Sorcha, this book reminded me of Cecilia Dart-Thorton’s Bitterbynde Trilogy (Ill-made Mute etc) but in the end, the excess wordiness of the latter let it down. In Daughter of the Forest however, the writing is smooth and evocative, the characters well-drawn and the story itself moves along quickly and without extraneous plot.

I did occasionally find the transition between giving of information and resuming the story poorly done – witness the beginning of Chapter Two. Also, the suddenly confessed love of the love interest’s brother for Sorcha felt forced; I’m not sure if it was part of the original tale or an element of these types of tales that needed to be in there for completeness, or if Marillier just wanted to have it in there, but I found it was jarring. And lastly, do you think her ingrate brothers actually thanked her when they were transformed back? Bastards.

Marillier is a Western Australia author (or at least lives in WA; she was born in New Zealand). Her website can be found here.

Interested? Buy it from Fishpond.com.au