C. J. Redwine’s The Wish Granter is the second novel in her Ravenspire series in which a popular fairy tale is reimagined into a more realistic (yet still fantasy) setting with serious consequences for the main characters. In this novel, she highlights the town of Sundraille where the royal family has recently died. The king’s bastard son, Thad Glavan, is next in line for the crown and becomes the king. Meanwhile Ari, Thad’s rebellious sister and best friend, struggles to learn how to become a princess.
Ari doesn’t realize exactly what Thad has gotten himself into until she encounters a strange and dangerous man who comes to visit her brother. Alistair Teague is the mastermind behind the criminal activity in Sundraille’s main town. Teague also happens to be the Wish Granter, an evil faerie banished from his home country for some mysterious reason. When he grants a wish, he collects a soul after a period of elapsed time. It’s up to Ari and a weapons master named Sebastian to figure out a way to defeat the Wish Granter.
If it sounds like I’ve given away most of the plot, don’t worry. The Wish Granter has a lot more story to unspool, and it twists and turns with real suspense and adventure. This is a long novel, yet much like the first novel in the series The Shadow Queen, it draws the reader in deeper and deeper until the final hundred pagers fly by. It’s a testament to the strength of the characters, the intricacies of the plot, and the vile adversary (Teague) that the book is so engrossing.
Ari is not your typical heroine. She likes to eat and cook, yet her mind is shrewd and she never backs down. Calculating and endearing, she learns the cost of risking a powerful villain’s ire. Sebastian is really one word at the beginning—stoic. In a sense, he’s the one with the largest character arc, and he makes for a dashing secondary character.
The book revels in the feeling of hopelessness it gives the reader as the inexperienced Ari and the street-smart Sebastian plot against the ancient Alistair. Success seems further away the closer they get, building both the suspense and the fun.
After praising The Shadow Queen, I bought The Wish Granter without hesitation. It sat on my shelf for a while for a number of reasons. One of them was I was afraid it wouldn’t live up to the thrills of the first book. I’m excited to report it’s a worthy second story to the Ravenspire series. An entry unlike the first but full of surprises and exciting sequences of its own.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G1FFHF0
Also in this series: The Shadow Queen .
