Daughter of the Forest

Sevenwaters, Book 1

By: Juliet Marillier

Narrated by: Terry Donnelly

Length: 26 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

Lovely Sorcha is the seventh child and only daughter of Lord Colum of Sevenwaters. Bereft of a mother, she is comforted by her six brothers who love and protect her. Sorcha is the light in their lives and they are determined that she know only contentment. But Sorcha's joy is shattered when her father is bewitched by his new wife, an evil enchantress who binds her brothers with a terrible spell, a spell which only Sorcha can lift - by staying silent.

If she speaks before she completes the quest set to her by the Fair Folk and their queen, the Lady of the Forest, she will lose her brothers forever. When Sorcha is kidnapped by the enemies of Sevenwaters and taken to a foreign land, she is torn between the desire to save her beloved brothers, and a love that comes only once. Sorcha despairs that she will never able to complete her task, but the magic of the Fair Folk knows no boundaries, and love is the strongest magic of them all....

©2000 Juliet Marillier (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Slow StoryPainful Narration

I forced myself to finish this book because I was told the other books in the series are worth it. This is true. The other books in the series are really good. This one is just okay. It takes a while to get going, then drags quite a bit again in the middle. It's also just a mostly depressing story. It sets the stage for the rest of the series though, so is necessary.

This book might be better to read rather than listen to though. The narrator is very difficult to listen to. Sheee taaalkssss soooo slowwww. I found her bearable at 1.25x speed, but even with that improvement, she speaks very strangely - haltingly and over enunciating each word. Plus she is over dramatic and the female lead character always sounds like she is weaping. It was really annoying.

The other books in the series are better in every way, better story, better pacing and better narrators - until you get to The Seer of Sevenwaters book where we get this narrator again unfortunately.

Beautiful fantasy with all the best elements

The fair folk. The Isle of Ireland. And possible quest with heroic sacrifice. Great love and great loss. A love of nature and beauty and all that is best in man. This is a lovely book!

This book is nothing short of incredible

I dont often write reviews, but this book needs one. When you wake from dreams you are having of the book you are listening to, when all you can do in our waking moments is think of what’s going to happen next... you know you’ve got a good one.
Very intense, beautifully written and performed. Every book I have purchased of Juliet Marillier I have enjoyed, she has an ability to take you into a different world and keep you there.

Loved every minute of this!

Beautiful but a little flawed and it needs TWs

This fairy tale retelling is gorgeous. It is slow moving but not dull. In places, it reads like a Miyazaki movie. Unlike most fairy tales, the secondary characters all have a rich inner life and distinct motives and personalities. But it does follow certain fairy tale conventions that may frustrate some readers.
And now the flaws. The book is a bit overwritten in places. There are times she is repetitive or belabors a point while you internally yell I GET IT. The ending is really drawn out. There are no morally gray characters. Everyone is good or bad or becomes good or bad. This actually didn't bother me as much as I thought it would.
THIS BOOK NEEDS TRIGGER WARNINGS. There is a rape scene. It is handled matter-of-factly and without over-sensationalizing it. It becomes an important part of the MC's character development, and her resulting PTSD changes how the story goes. If you are sensitive to rape, you should know it's there.
And lastly the Reader. Terry Donnelly performed the story really well and gave every character a distinct voice. She captured the emotion of the story. The only reason I gave 4 stars instead of 5 was that she managed to make a teenage girl sound like an old woman with a thin wavering voice. But I can't fault her too much for that. The story is told in retrospect, so maybe it is supposed to be an old woman remembering the story.

One of my favorite books

Loved the book when I first read it and loved this performance of it. I couldn’t stop listening.

An old fairy tale retold

It took me a while to realize this was a fairy tale I had read many times long ago. I think there were 12 siblings in the old one. I can't remember for sure, but I remember the one female sibling had to weave 12 shirts for her brothers to break the spell so they could be men again instead of the swans the evil spell had changed them into. In any case, told in this old Irish setting when belief in fairies and little people was strong is marvelous. As one who works with herbs and creates healing salves, I appreciate it all the more. The reading is wonderful as well. I did have to speed up the narration as in the default it was a bit slow.
This is my first book by Marillier and it will not be my last!

great world, long with trials

It was a fun story and world but dragged on and on. Everything that could go wrong did and it was hard to go on at some points.

Narration could have been much better

The story was SO SLOW for the first few chapters, and chapters are very long. The narrator read so slow too that it frustrated me to no end. Eventually the story picked up and was a solid 4.5 stars but unfortunately i could just not get used to the narrator. Voice didn't fit mood much of the time and i kept getting pulled out of the moment by unnatural excitement of narrator when depicting voice of protagonist

Love the story, hate the performer

I absolutely love this book, enough that I've now read it 3 separate times. Unfortunately, the audiobook performance leaves much to be desired. Half the time it's good, but the other half of the time the performer's voice takes on this horrible, desperate, whining quality that is SO annoying and makes it almost impossible to get through

2 stars, were it not for the great narrator

There is a lot I didn't like about this book. The prevalent "not like other girls" trope, casual misogyny from our protagonist to a minor female character, most of male characters treating our protagonist as if she were an object (her brothers being the worst offenders), a solution to a curse that seems overtly cruel for no apparent reason (except to make us pity the protagonist, perhaps?), perverted and purely evil lord that lusts for our protagonist (which seems to be a staple of Marillier's stories? Blackthorn & Grim had one as well), the age gap between our protagonist and her beloved, an out of nowhere assumption by a male character that a female character would love and wait for him just because she nursed him to health and many, many others.

I would have probably dnf-ed this story was it not for the narrator Terry Donnelly, who, in my opinion, brought the story and its vibes to life. And, since I listened to this story when I was quite stressed out and anxious, a viby, slow moving story helped me relax.

Still, while I was mildly displeased during the whole story, its ending enraged me.

All in all, I think this story is <i>nowhere</i> as good as Blackthorn & Grim and I would have gladly given it 2 stars were it not for the great narrator.

Still, even with my dislike of it, I might continue on with the series when I am stressed out and in need of an atmospheric, slow moving read.