"Start of an exceptional fantasy series about a troubled young lady"
Reviewed by Clare O'Beara
Posted October 19, 2014
Fantasy | Fiction
Ever since I saw the eye-catching cover I wanted to read
the exciting young adult book MURDERESS. The tale starts
in a way familiar to Harry Potter fans - with a girl on a
train heading for a boarding school. Lu Killer has no
bunch
of friends however; this is not her first boarding school;
and she has no idea that a boy is about to fall from the
sky and land on his feet in the train.
Daya Marnin certainly catches our attention with the
opening chapter. After that, Lu finds her feet at the
school outside London, coming across to us as a lonely,
depressed young lady. She doesn't know what to make of the
Essex girls who fill the room with chatter and insist on
giving her a makeover. When scary things start to happen -
like the windows all shattering - Lu doesn't know the
cause, but one of the girls, Bridget, seems to blame her.
Jolted out of her torpor, Lu decides to investigate.
While
she knows perfectly well that she has issues, these have
been caused by her lack of a family and constant moving
between schools. So she's surprised when a scholar who
interprets family names shouts abuse at her, once he hears
the surname Killer. He calls her a MURDERESS and blames
the
loss of his family on her. The unjust treatment makes Lu
so
angry she could burst into flames - and suddenly she's
sending a lance of fire at the old professor.
Both a modern day witchcraft tale and a fantasy involving
other worlds, MURDERESS has plenty to interest teens who
like their reading on the darker side. I really enjoyed
the
massed snowball fight at the school, which is also the
first time that Lu enjoys herself. Not all battles are so
innocent however. The land of Greywall'd is only a
heartbeat away once Lu wakes up to her powers, but she
arrives there in the midst of a war. Be prepared for
mortal
combat as the tale turns darker. While my first impression
of the world of Greywall'd was brief, Lu returns there and
the land comes alive as she explores. Missing this well-
realised medieval land, with indigenous ecology and
peoples
would have been a shame.
Daya Marnin is herself a young adult and she has captured
the essence of the Goth girl, then clearly revelled in
casting her heroine into experiences beyond her wildest
dreams. The book is translated by N.L. Lumi and is also
available in the original Hebrew. I'm hoping the next
heart-stopping instalment in The Exiles of Greywall'd
Saga will be out soon.
SUMMARY
Lu Killer never wondered if her name was strange. ‘Killer’.
How was she to guess her ancestors fought ferociously
against the royal family for generations? How was she to
know her family lived in a completely different world called
Greywall’d? All that 16-year-old Lu cared for was when she
could next listen to her music, next be left to her own
devices and when she could truly feel at peace. But her life changed completely when a young boy with a hat
fell from the sky into her train… Murderess is the first book of ‘The Exiles of Greywall’d
Saga’ and features the beginning of a spine-tingling story
with a new world where Lu will discover that she has a
critical part to play in the future of Greywall’d. Daya Marnin started writing Murderess two years ago when she
was thirteen. She is currently writing “Priestess”, the
second part of the saga .
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