RELEASE DATE. January 6, 2012
PUBLISHER. MIRA Books UK
PAGES. 400
FORMAT. Paperback
AGE GROUP. Young Adult
GENRE. Dystopian, Fantasy, Romance
SOURCE. Publisher
PURCHASE. AMAZON | BOOK DEPOSITORY
SYNOPSIS. They destroyed her world. But she’s their only hope…Avry’s power to heal the sick should earn her respect in the plague-torn land of Kazan. Instead she is feared. Her kind are blamed for the horrifying disease that has taken hold of the nation.
When Avry uses forbidden magic to save a dying child, she faces guillotine. Until a dark, mysterious man rescues her from prison cell. His people need Avry’s magic to save their dying prince. The very prince who first unleashed the plague on Kazan.
Saving the prince is certain to kill Avry—yet she already faces a violent death. Now she must choose—use her healing touch to show the ultimate mercy or die a martyr to a lost cause?
THOUGHTS. At first, I didn’t know what to expect. It’s been awhile since I have read a Fantasy book. After finishing Touch of Power, I was speechless. It caught me straight off and couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Snyder has a skill that could intricately put everything in their right places. She crafted a world so detailed, with clarity, and with brilliance from The Fifteen Realms to its smallest towns, from the Nine Mountains to the lilies. She knows how to charm her readers and I’m unquestionably one of the charmed ones.
Snyder also delivered a cast of very amazing characters. One was Avry whom I won’t consider a girl but a woman who showed no weaknesses at all—even for love. And I adored her for that. She was a perfect heroine for me. She was so strong and did what she had to do. She had a heart and a mind of her own. Yet Avry’s story wasn’t just her story. Other characters as well were creatively written with so much wit and prowess. Each one has a distinct color, appearance, and voice and what you just have to do is listen to them and let them play in your mind all at once. Even the villains were perfectly done. I got to hate them yet couldn’t help to love them at the end. Almost all the characters were so lifelike to me. Their developments as a character and their relationships with each other were also vividly told even though the story was from Avry’s standpoint.
Almost everything in this book caught my attention, not only the detailed world, not only the incredible characters, not only the twists I didn’t expect coming but also the romance that shocked me most. Kerrick was an insensitive, insolent man yet he gradually changed and made Avry fell in love with him. I knew from the beginning that they would end with each other but never did I thought that something pleasurable would happened to them at the end.
Behold the fantastic world of Touch of Power where everything you could imagine could happen in one sitting. It is a gripping, unpredictable read of magic, adventure, drama, treachery, deception, romance, name it, Touch of Power has it all. Snyder crafted a unique and unlikely read story that I could say one of my favorites for this year so far—perhaps my top favorite of all. Even though this is my first Maria V. Snyder book I assure you that this wouldn’t be the last.