The Kiss of Deception - Review

The Kiss of Deception (The Remnant Chronicles #1)

By: Mary E. Pearson

Published: July 8, 2014 by Henry Holt

492 pages

Source: Personal Kindle Library

(Goodreads /Amazon)

Summary:

A princess must find her place in a reborn world.

She flees on her wedding day.

She steals ancient documents from the Chancellor's secret collection.

She is pursued by bounty hunters sent by her own father.

She is Princess Lia, seventeen, First Daughter of the House of Morrighan.

The Kingdom of Morrighan is steeped in tradition and the stories of a bygone world, but some traditions Lia can't abide. Like having to marry someone she's never met to secure a political alliance.

Fed up and ready for a new life, Lia flees to a distant village on the morning of her wedding. She settles in among the common folk, intrigued when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive—and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. Deceptions swirl and Lia finds herself on the brink of unlocking perilous secrets—secrets that may unravel her world—even as she feels herself falling in love.

MY REVIEW:
What a fantastic fantasy story! I thoroughly enjoyed it and the near 500 pages rushed by quickly.

Seeing as how the story is told from multiple POV's, Lia, the assassin, the prince, and later others, I was taking notes along the way trying to figure out who the mysterious strangers are.

Lia is a princess, the first born daughter of the house of Morrighan and as such she has been arranged to marry the prince from a neighboring country to form an alliance between them. Not wanting to be a pawn in her father's military, and desperately wanting to marry for love, she flees on her wedding day escaping to a town that's a weeks horse ride away. While she is living this new life of an average bar maiden, unbeknownst to her, an assassin is after her and the prince she was arranged to marry is as well. The reader is taken on quite the journey, trying to guess who these handsome guys are and what the motives of each are.

There is a strange language used by some of the characters and just as Lia doesn't understand them, the reader is clueless to what's being said too. I couldn't tell if it was a made up language or not so I picked a word and tried to translate it but to no avail. (shakes fist at the made up language genius!)

This story rivaled my affections for the adult fantasy series The Song of Ice and Fire. If you're a fan of big world building, interesting characters that make you question where their loyalties lie and if there's more than meets the eye to them, then you will surely enjoy this new YA fantasy series! This is one story I'd love to see come to the big screen too!

Favorite Quotes:
I tried to imagine someone who hungered for the same things I did and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, and not because it fulfilled a loveless agreement on paper.

Which truth was more cruel? His deception and betrayal, or his death?

"Deliberate deception is not a mistake. It's calculating and cold,"

That was what I both hated and loved about... He challenged me on everything I said, but he also listened intently. He listened as if every word I said mattered.

Nights like this. They go on and on, outlasting the moon, because they're made of something else, something as quiet as a heartbeat and as sweeping as the wind. For me, tonight would last forever.

Maybe there was no one way to define it. Maybe there were as many shades of love as the blues of the sky.

Final Rating - 4.5 stars!