Book Review: The Traitor’s Daughter by Paula Brandon

The Traitor's Daughter by Paula Brandon

Here’s the beginning of a lush, epic, wholly original new trilogy that shines with magic, mystery, and captivating drama.

On the Veiled Isles, ominous signs are apparent to those with the talent to read them. The polarity of magic is wavering at its source, heralding a vast upheaval poised to alter the very balance of nature. Blissfully unaware of the cataclysmic events to come, Jianna Belandor, the beautiful, privileged daughter of a powerful Faerlonnish overlord, has only one concern: the journey to meet her prospective husband. But revolution is stirring as her own conquered people rise up against their oppressors, and Jianna is kidnapped and held captive at a rebel stronghold, insurance against what are perceived as her father’s crimes.

The resistance movement opens Jianna’s eyes―and her heart. Despite her belief in her father’s innocence, she is fascinated by the bold and charming nomadic physician and rebel sympathizer, Falaste Rione—who offers Jianna her only sanctuary in a cold and calculating web of intrigue. As plague and chaos grip the land, Jianna is pushed to the limits of her courage and resourcefulness, while virulent enemies discover that alliance is their only hope to save the human race.

The Traitor’s Daughter is built upon an interesting concept, but it has some unfortunate flaws that make it difficult for me to really like it. It felt far too long and, for the majority of the book, had a disappointing lack of likable characters. Overall, this book feels like an overly long setup for the next book in the series.

There are many plot threads in this book, and while they’re not that difficult to follow, I feel like a few of them could have been cut much, much shorter to make for a more enjoyable read. The book starts with Grix Orlazzu and his automaton, and this plot thread introduces the idea that the arcane powers threaded through the Veiled Isles is about to change drastically. And then Orlazzu disappears for a full half of the book. He only shows up twice more, in the middle and at the very end, and I was left scratching my head.

The majority of the book is devoted to Jianna Belandor, the daughter of Magnifico Aureste Belandor. Aureste is a lord, the leader of one of the occupied Faerlonnish families, but he is also a collaborator with the Taerleezi, who invaded the Faerlonnish home island years before. His daughter is kidnapped by someone with a bone to pick with Aureste, and most of the book deals with Jianna’s trials and Aureste’s plans to get his daughter back.

There is also a plot thread having to do with Aureste’s enemy, Vinz Corvestri, but it doesn’t have much page time either, like Orlazzu’s story. However, by the end of the book I could see that all of these threads are coming together to form a more cohesive whole. Unfortunately, that cohesive whole started to become apparent in the last fifty pages of the book. After reading the whole thing, I was left feeling like The Traitor’s Daughter has enough plot for maybe 200 pages, but it’s been stretched to fill over 400. It’s a very long setup for the next book in the series.

For the majority of the book, I found myself sympathizing with very few characters. Jianna Belandor is a spoiled young woman, and though she slowly learns that she can’t get her way by throwing around her father’s name, I spent most of the book wishing she would snap out of it. Aureste is not a good man, as his daughter believes, and the reader knows that from the very beginning. His only redeeming feature is his devotion to his daughter and his disabled brother, Innesq, but otherwise he is a conniving boot-licker devoted to benefitting himself at the expense of others.

I get the feeling we are supposed to feel sympathy for Jianna’s captors given their history, but they are written in such a way that you absolutely hate them. On one hand, I actually applaud the author for making her characters all inhabit a moral grey area. No one is all good and no one is all evil; each character has some sort of redeeming quality, but even the good ones have major flaws. It’s nice that there is no black and white.

On the other hand, it’s a little hard to get into a story when you want to slap all of the characters, or maybe even murder them in their sleep.

There are a few characters who are basically all good, like Falaste Rione, a young doctor who helps the Faerlonnish resistance. But after seeing so many shades of grey before he shows up in the story, I was left feeling like he was almost unrealistically good.

There is also a race of amphibious beings called the Sishmendri who appear as servants for the human characters. They felt important, and I get the feeling that they’re going to play a bigger role in the next book, but from this book alone, they feel incidental, like set dressing for a strange world.

The story definitely picks up in the last third of the book, and by the end, I was much, much more interested in it than I was during the first two-thirds. It’s just very unfortunate that I had to slog through so many pages devoted to very little plot.

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