Royal Exile - Fiona McIntosh

[goodreads]

Title: Royal Exile
Author: Fiona McIntosh
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 480 pages
Date read: October, 2009

From out of the East they came riding like a merciless plague - destroying kingdom after kingdom and the sovereigns who had previously mocked the warlord Loethar and his barbarian horde. Now only one land remains unconquered - the largest, richest, and most powerful realm of the Denova Set... Penraven.

The Valisar royals of Penraven face certain death, for the savage tyrant Loethar covets what they alone possess: the fabled Valisar Enchantment, an irresistible power to coerce, which will belong to Loethar once every Valisar has been slain. But the last hope of the besieged kingdom is being sent in secret from his doomed home, in the company of a single warrior. The future of Penraven now rests on the shoulders of the young Crown Prince Leonel who, though untried and untested in the ways of war, must survive brutality and treachery in order to claim the Valisar throne.

It seems that most fantasy books these days are part of a series. I guess there's so much that needs to be thought out in order to invent a fantasy universe, that it seems like a waste to only use it for one book, so they're turned into series instead. That in itself doesn't bother me, but it does get old when one constantly reads books with no real conclusion, because the plot continues in the next novel.

Royal Exile is such a book. Thankfully I'm familiar with Fiona McIntosh's writing, so I was forewarned that this might be the case before I started the book, and therefore didn't mind as much as I usually would. It also helped a lot that the book was absolutely brilliant, so I was completely drawn in by the universe and the characters. Royal Exile sets the scene magnificently. The characters are complex, and the complication without no simple resolution. I'm very interested in seeing what happens next.