FORGE AND FIRE - by Ripley Proserpina
OMG such a great book. First time I've read this author and she recommended this as a starting place when I met her at a book conference. WOW I'm glad she did. This book was so great. It's like nothing I've ever read before. It's a fantasy, it's got shifters, magical beings that no one has ever thought of, human worlds, magical worlds that are alive and will smack you down if you disparage them. A bunch of hot hunks who all dislike each other but are weirdly drawn to a woman built of sticks and mud who should have died 20 years earlier... It's so hard to describe this book, a bit of a dark fairy tale, a lot of a slow burn both for characters and the reader but brilliant all the same. You just have to read and find out for yourself. And so now I have a new author to become addicted to - HOORAY!
Tatiana is a replacement—an exchanged child—created to take the place of a perfect human baby and left in a cradle on a cold, winter night. But twenty years later, her time is running out. The creature who made Tatiana returns and challenges everything she knows. Not only is Tatiana not human, and her family not her family, but the human world is killing her. Determined to give her family the life—and daughter—they deserve, Tatiana journeys to a strange world, one of fire and dust, and concrete and glass. There, she'll risk everything to find the human girl she replaced, and make things right. But she won’t be alone. Grisha, a roamer, and Fedir, a mysterious shifter, find her and vow to help her.
And they aren’t the only ones. Soon, Shubin, Taras, and Kopala, are caught up in Tatiana’s quest. Fascinated by this exchanged girl, the five otherworldly creatures will put their trust in her. But hope is a fragile thing, and Tatiana's been burned before. Will she come to believe she's finally found a place to belong?
