BOOK REVIEW: The Lyre Thief by Jennifer Fallon

Amy Briggs | 27 March 2016 | Reply

BOOK REVIEW: The Lyre Thief by Jennifer Fallon

Harper Collins
March, 2016
Paperback, $29.99
Reviewed by Amy Briggs

Fantasy

8/10

“Is that supposed to be empty?” he asked, pointing to the alcove set about shoulder height into the pillar.
Tarja and Shananara both turned in the direction he was pointing.
“That is…was…the shrine to Gimlorie,” Shananara said, shaking her head with a slight quaver in her voice.
“What was in it?”
“A lyre,” the queen told him, unable to take her eyes off the empty shrine. “ A tiny golden lyre.”
“It has everything to do with it,” Shananara said softly. “ Each representation of the gods is their Covenant seal.”
“The Covenant,” she repeated. ”It is the Covenant which gives the gods the ability to walk among us. It is the Covenant that brought the Harshini into being…
“So it’s important then?”
“More than you could possibly imagine.”
“Then the God of Music isn’t dead,” the Lord Defender said. “ Someone has stolen him.”

The golden lyre stolen from the God of Music…

Two sisters and a dangerous secret…

A dashing assassin who is falling in love with a princess…

A king’s daughter and her servant swap identities so Princess Rakaia can escape a horrible fate. Rakaia’s servant and half sister, Charisee, takes her place.

Charisee tries her best to stride her way through royalty and its complicated politics, while Rakaia is picked up on the road by the Demon Child, a prominent character in Fallon’s other series, Demon Child.

Meanwhile there is a lyre stolen from a temple of the Harshini, a spiritual group of people who look after the magic and the gods in this world. The stolen lyre upsets the balance of magic and order; even potentially jeopardizing the future.

As I had never read any of Fallon’s other work, I wasn’t sure what to expect from The Lyre Thief. I understood it to be high fantasy, which is unfortunately a genre that can get a bit repetitive, so this book could have gone either way. But Fallon offers us an addictive story, and her fluent and lyrical writing speaks of her status as a well-seasoned author; immersing the reader within the space of a few pages and leaving them with book grief after finishing the last page.

For this reader, the characters are the best aspect of The Lyre Thief; all extremely vivid and with their own separate adventures weaving in and out of the main plotline. Every character is intriguing, and each one’s journey is absolutely fascinating. Each god introduced in The Lyre Thief is remarkable and entertaining and sometimes downright comical in their meddling within the human society. And Charisee is a lovely character to spend time with and her personal growth from servant to princess is interesting and engaging.

In this first book in the series, Fallon certainly does a good job in setting up the story to come, and leaves you hanging for more. She also manages to give the reader a little insight into her previous series, which is set within the same fantasy world, in which a lot of the characters from The Lyre Thief played a part. This allows the reader to read these series in whichever order they like, and come away not feeling lost as to what’s going on.

This is the first book in the Wars of the Gods series – the second series within the Hythrun Chronicles – and Jennifer Fallon’s other books have now been added to my (incredibly long) to read list.