Rose's Briar: Dragon's Keep by Janet Lee Carey

Young adult fans of dark fantasy drawn to novels like Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series for its exploration of good and evil as well as for its romance will find much to love in Janet Lee Carey's Dragon's Keep. Drawing from the Arthurian cycle, Carey builds upon Merlinian prophecy to shape a tale which cuts through the conventional concepts of light and dark, good and evil, in fantasy literature.

Merlin had prophesied that the twenty-first queen of Wilde Island, descendant of Arthur's banished sister Egraine, would "with a wave of her hand" end war and restore the glory of Wilde Island. But the twentieth queen, unable to conceive the long-anticipated princess for many years, takes a witch's cure of swallowing the contents of a stolen dragon egg, and her daughter is born perfect, save for one ring finger in the shape and color of the dragon's claw. Concealing this deformity with golden gloves which she decrees that all courtly women shall wear, Queen Gweneth seeks every magical and religious cure for Princess Rosalind, hoping that she will fulfil the prophecy, becoming the bride of Prince Henry of England and ending the Plantagenet wars. To protect her daughter's dark secret, Gweneth secretly brings about the murder of the witch who helped her conceive, the midwife who delivered her child, and finally Rosalind's beloved old nurse.

As Rosalind turns sixteen the island is troubled by a dragon which carries off even her childhood playmate. When Lord Godrick and his dragonslayer son Kye sail into port with the slain dragon as cargo, the islanders hope that their time of fear is over. But when their rejoicing turns into revenge upon the female dragon's body, its mate Lord Faul appears, harvests her unlaid eggs and snatches Rosalind, flying with her to his island redoubt, Dragon's Keep. There he keeps her as a slave to care for the eggs and help raise the four hatchling pips on bitter thistle and milkweed milk.

As the young dragons grow and learn to speak and fly, Rose, whom Faul renames Briar, feels herself drawn into the fearful family, finally coming to realize that through her mother's stolen dragon egg, her claw, potentially a mark of Satan back home, is at Dragon's Keep a mark of Faul's fatherhood. Hearing the story, even the younglings accept her as their human sister. When Rose/Briar's maid Kit comes with the knights sent to rescue her, she sacrifices her own life to try to save one of the young dragons from a flood, and her sacrifice draws tears of forgiveness for the years of warfare from Faul. As Faul dies of his own tears, Rosalind knows she must return to Wilde Island to reconcile her people with the dragons.

Bound over to trial as a witch by an evil usurper who conspired in her mother's death while she was away, Rosalind has only one hope--that the dragonslayer Kye who knows the truth behind her dragon claw will come to save her and fulfill Merlin's prophecy and that her dragon finger will be recognized as the sign of redemption and peace between the ancient enemies.

Dragon's Keep is a beautifully developed fantasy. Deeply engrossing and lyrically written, the characters are fully realized. From the devoted but monomaniacal queen to the castle's cook to the dragon family themselves, the characters are richly drawn, and the complex theme of beauty and ugliness, good and evil is treated with imaginative but reverent respect. Author of The Beast of Noor, the first book of a proposed series, Janet Lee Carey here shows that she can construct a fantasy world which weaves strands from legend, folklore, and fantasy without leaving behind the all-too-human heart within, all inside the confines of a compelling adventure story that will keep readers in its spell.