Fin­ished Warprize by Eliz­a­beth Vaughn.

This one’s about Xylara, a healer who sac­ri­fices her­self to become the “Warprize” and end a war between her peo­ple and a tribe called the Fire­landers. Xylara has been heal­ing the wounded Fire­landers who’ve been brought into the city against the wish­es of her half-brother king, Xymund. One day, Lara runs into Keir, a Firelander. She doesn’t real­ize it at the time, but Keir is the leader of the Fire­landers. He’s imme­di­ately drawn to Lara and her com­pas­sion for his men. Keir tells Xymund that he will stop the war if Lara is given to him as the “Warprize.” Lara is hor­ri­fied at the thought of being a slave, but she does the right thing and agrees to sac­ri­fice her­self so no one else will die. The rest of the book deals with Lara’s attempts to fit into Keir’s world and the grow­ing love between the two.

The book is writ­ten in first-person, and I really loved Lara’s voice. She’s a great char­ac­ter — smart, com­pas­sion­ate, noble, and stronger than she real­izes. It was easy to cheer for her. Keir was also easy to like, and the sup­port­ing cast of char­ac­ters were a lot of fun.

This is a fan­tasy romance, and some­times one or the other will get short-changed (usu­ally the romance) as the plot goes along. Not in this book. It was an excel­lent blend of the two. I thought the romance pro­gressed nicely and appro­pri­ately given Lara’s circumstances. I also really liked the end­ing, where Lara out­wits Keir to get what she wants most — him.

I do have a few lit­tle quib­bles though (don’t I always?). One thing that never seemed to be fully explained was why Keir was attack­ing the land of Xy in the first place. I don’t remem­ber a rea­son why other than the Fire­landers had raided the land in the past. Or maybe I just missed it in my haste to find out what was going to hap­pen next.

I also thought Lara for­gave Keir a lit­tle too eas­ily at the begin­ning. After all, he’s the one who started the war with no prova­ca­tion. Thou­sands (?) of peo­ple are dead because of him. Lara is a healer first and fore­most, and I thought this should have been more of a con­flict for her — or at least made her a lit­tle more cau­tious about falling in love with Keir.

Lara’s half-brother, Xymund, was a bit of a stereo­type — inse­cure and insanely jeal­ous of Lara, even though she offered him noth­ing but love and sup­port in return. But every book’s got to have a villain.

Still, despite my quib­bles, this is one of the best books I’ve read all year, and I’m look­ing for­ward to the rest of the tril­ogy. Big thumbs up.

Up next: Hell’s Belles by Jackie Kessler.