Book Review

The Curse

By Jina S. Bazaar

Publisher: Jina S. Bazzar

Publish date: April 15th, 2018

Source: author

Format: eBook

Page number: 53(?)

Genre: YA fantasy, with sci-fi and paranormal elements

Dates read: April 14th, 2018

Rating: 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟

Summary: Yoncey Fosch, the leader of the Unseelie Dhiultadh clan would give anything to save his brother from a mysterious plague. Anything, including his leadership mantle and a favor to his deadliest enemy, Queen Titania’s consort.
But his actions will have far reaching consequences, and Fosch realizes he is not only unwilling to pay the price, but will defy anyone who calls him on it.

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“It was Fosch’s fault they got our trail in the first place, it’s only fair his daughter fix his mess.”

Yoncey Fosch, the much beloved and respected clan leader of the Unseelie Dhiultadh (a fee or half one), would do anything for those he loves. So, In Spring, 1822, when his people begin falling Ill to a magical plague, he comes up with a risky plan to try to save them all – especially since his brother is one of the victims to this deadly disease. He has the power to preform the ritual to cure them, being Unseelie and earth witch, but he doesn’t have the binding stones to complete it. That’s when Yoncey decides to turn to one of his most deadliest enemies for help: Fee royalty – Seelie Queen Titania’s consort, Oberon, of the Sidhe land (a land he was banished from because of his heretige).

It’s there that the Unseelie clan leader will make his gravest mistake by leaving Oberon’s request open, and then by underestimating it. A year later he learns what Oberon wants of him: produce a human hybrid to be raised in the seelie court, and have the scion breed with Seelie royalty to help grow their army (the cycle of breeding would continue until the offspring were deemed Seelie enough). The Fee people detest humans, so Yoncey agreed knowing he would have no feelings for the woman or child he used. He later realizes that Oberon never gave him a time frame in which to complete his end of the bargin, and foolishly believes he can avoid following through on a technicality. However, the Fee people will always ensure they get what they’ve bargin for, one way or another.

Meanwhile, Arianna Lenard, witch and lover of Yoncey’s brother, goes missing when the plague hits. Working alongside her friends, Zantry and Remo, to exact revenge on those they lost during the mage wars, draining energy from everything they can to gain power. That was before the trio learned that in order to gain power you had to hurt it’s source. That knowledge stopped Arianna and Zantry, but not Remo; the three of them destroyed the once beautiful Low Lands and made it what it is today. Now Remo controls the portals to that world and feeds on whatever passes through them, growing stronger. The famous three destroyed themselves – Remo become a monster, Zantry has gone missing, and Arianna is powerless to fix any of it. Her original plan for revenge back fired and now she can’t even take revenge on Remo with out dooming the entire universe.

Arianna learned that the powers of a Dhiultadh and a sorcerer could freeze the portals, but if they’re mingled into one, it could destroy them. She lost her first child, Cara, to the war against the man she once called a friend, but now she will make another sacrafice to put an end to things. She turns to her witch friend, Matilda, and asks her to preform dark magic – to transfer all of her power to her future child, while erasing all of her memory. The child would be raised as a weapon by the Fee royalty as discussed, and to prevent feeling yet another loss, she will be able to start life a new as a human, with no power or memory of who she is. Arianna changes her appearance and her name to Bella, and the magic pushes her to find a suitable father, which leads her to Yoncey, decades after he made his bargin.

Slowly but surely, as the pregnancy progresses, her witchy aura fades to that of a human’s, and her memory along with it. Yoncey can’t understand why and fears for his mate and child, but when the birth takes a turn for the worst and he has no way to prove that his mate was a preternatural, Oberon comes to collect. Yoncey refuses to give the beloved child of his mate to his enemies, forfeiting his life and puts his daughter Roxanne in his brother’s hands, the Unseelie clans new leader.

None of the clan members know what bargin their former leader could have made with Oberon, and they’re angry at him for his secrecy, as well as for gaining the interest of a very dangerous group of people who want to study them – the PSS. They decide to use Roxanne to right her father’s wrongs – afterall, it’s just an abomination in their eyes, being that its half human.

The Curse by Jina S. Bazaar  is a prequel novella to her Roxanne Fosch series (Book one is Heir of Ashes). This is a fast paced paranormal / sci-fi, that will tell you how Roxanne’s story came to be. While I feel you could read the prequel or book one in any order you’d like, I enjoyed reading Heir of Ashes first. I think maybe starting with the prequel will take away some of the mystery in book one, which is something I really loved about it. Jina S. Bazaar really knows how to build up suspense and all of her Plot twists and information are carefully laid out – I love her writing style!

There wasn’t a lot of world building in this installment, the main focus was on the character’s and the choices they made that lead us to Heir of Ashes. I really loved how the author showed us the two sides of this story, while managing to give us a better understanding of all the characters and how things work in this world. This story does time hop from the plague and war, to when Roxanne was born, which was a little confusing. Not so much so that I couldn’t keep up, but I couldn’t tell exactly how much time had passed since 1822 to the birth, or what time frame that would put Roxanne in current day.

We learn a lot more about all the secondary characters that are in book one, and even get introduced to a couple of new ones, too. Learning more about these characters gave me a better understanding of Roxanne and Logan, even though they were barley apart of this book. I wish there was a little more about the famous three and a bit more insight to Yoncey, Arianna and Archer before everything happened. Though, with the author’s writing style (which I love) I doubt that this will be the last we see of those characters (especially Archer), they all play an important part in this series, no matter how small of a role they get.

Unlike Heir of Ashes, this book gives you a lot more history, background information and character development. Even though there isn’t much action involved, there’s a ton of secrecy (kept between the characters), risky scheming and plot twits that will keep you glued to the pages. Despite all the information we get compared to book one, I didn’t feel like I was overloaded and I didn’t fall into any dry spots, and I think that’s important.

Now that I have a better understanding of all the characters and their world(s), I am even more excited to read book two! Although this prequel is short, there are so many layers to it. A lot of questions are answered in this novella, but there are also a lot of set up’s for the rest of this series. I think this is a great prequel, and I definitely recommend it!

**** Thank you Jina S. Bazaar for gifting me an early copy of her book. ****