Froi of the Exiles (Lumatere Chronicles, #2) in Aussie Readers

Sep 07, 2012 Bree T rated it it was amazing

Shelves: young-adult, fantasy-sci-fi, series, australian, aww2012

It is three years since the curse on Lumatere was lifted and Queen Isaboe and her Consort Finnikin are rebuilding their beloved country. They haven’t forgotten the wrong that Charyn did to them, sending the Imposter King and raping and pillaging their women and lands. When a Charyn rebel contacts them and says he has a way to get them into the palace and a way for them to kill the King of Charyn, the ears of Lumatere are listening.

Froi has been trained by the best and he is the one that is the r It is three years since the curse on Lumatere was lifted and Queen Isaboe and her Consort Finnikin are rebuilding their beloved country. They haven’t forgotten the wrong that Charyn did to them, sending the Imposter King and raping and pillaging their women and lands. When a Charyn rebel contacts them and says he has a way to get them into the palace and a way for them to kill the King of Charyn, the ears of Lumatere are listening.

Froi has been trained by the best and he is the one that is the right age to impersonate one of the lastborn of Charyn and enter the kingdom with a dangerous mission: to assassinate their leader who has gone unpunished for the crimes he committed against the people of Lumatere. He imagines it will be quick, he has his orders and the minute the heart of the King of Charyn stops beating, he is to go home to Lumatere. But Froi is not prepared for what he finds in this broken nation – people who are both quietly proud and deeply ashamed of acts performed in the name of their homeland. A Princess who is so broken she just might almost be insane. A Priestling and an architect so gifted that share the same face but also a deep and twisted fierce devotion and hatred for each other from events long in the past. Froi can’t deny that there is a little piece of him that is at home here. He doesn’t want to examine it too closely but he’s having to face the mystery of his birth and heritage at last, high above the ground and deep in the caves below it as he finds himself fighting to save the one who will break the curse on this barren place.

Froi Of The Exiles is the second novel in Melina Marchetta’s Lumatere Chronicles and honestly, my love for this author and her work has no bounds. I’d put off reading the fantasy trilogy until all 3 volumes were released, but also because I couldn’t see myself loving them as much as I loved her contemporaries. Well, that was utterly stupid of me because these books are fraught with the same beautiful and fragile emotions and relationships as her fabulous contemporaries. The only difference is we’re treated to a new world so fleshed out it takes my breath away.

Froi is a big book – just shy of 600p in large paperback form and there’s such a lot going on here. It’s hard to know where to start but I’m going to go with what I absolutely adore about Melina Marchetta books and that is the way in which she fleshes out characters and relationships! There’s so much to love here, be it Froi and his growing up, learning to control his temper, serving his Queen and later on his struggle with just who he might be. Then there’s his strange relationship with the broken Princess, two people warring inside a mind that struggles for sanity, given the horrors she has seen, lived through and been subjected to, often at the hands of those who should’ve been closest to her and protected her the most. I love the way Melina Marchetta’s characters are so flawed in so many different ways and like Froi in Finnikin Of The Rock, our first glimpses of Quintana of Charyn are less than flattering. She’s unkempt, dirty, bordering on mania and insanity, two twisted personalities living within her. Froi and her are never going to be that couple that things go smoothly but even for a Marchetta book, their waters are deeply troubled, misunderstandings and tortured loyalties dividing them frequently. They cannot ignore the song inside the both of them that draw them to each other, much the way that Finnikin and Evanjalin/Isaboe couldn’t in the first novel. Even when they were fighting, they needed to be near each other, to see and touch and it is somewhat similar with Froi and Quintana.

Secondary characters are never ignored and the beautiful and broken relationship and the twin brothers, Gargarin and Arjuro was some of the most powerful writing I’ve come across in my life. A simplicity that was heartbreaking lay at the foot of the discord between these two brothers and watching them struggle with hatred, despair, love, devotion and regret was part of the wrenching emotion at the core of this book. Likewise the distant relationship between Lucian of the Monts and the Charyn wife he took to honour a pact made by his late and very beloved father and then sent away, was another part of this story that I absolutely adored. I was devastated towards the end of this book when Marchetta made me believe one thing before these two could mend their differences and accept the fact that they were both in love with each other but I now live in high hope that I’ll get the fabulous pay off I crave in Quintana Of Charyn.

There is nothing that isn’t covered here. The politics are so complex, the factions within Charyn are many and varied and it’s a country so devastated in spirit and divided that you can see it’s crying out for a real leader to bring all of the people back together and give them a common goal. The curse has left it twisted in hatred and fear and that breeds ignorance and violence. The desire to take the throne for their own corrupts more than one individual and to keep Quintana safe when there are many who would kill her is no easy task. The places they can go for safety are few and far between.

Froi Of The Exiles is everything the second novel of a trilogy should be and no filler. It does however, have a bit of a cliffhanger of an ending, as volumes in trilogies often do and I’d been well warned about this before I started this series. Luckily I chose to wait and was able to dive into the third and final novel, Quintana Of Charyn almost straight away. I cannot wait to see how this all ends. ...more

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Dec 15, 2011 Tahlia Newland rated it liked it

Shelves: ya, fantasy

Melina Marchetta is a master wordsmith who expresses her stories with elegance and clarity, but there is more to an enjoyable novel than a skilful use of words. It’s the content of Marchetta’s writing that I have difficulty with in this series.

In the first book, ‘Finnikin of the Rock’, Marchetta introduced us to a damaged world and the characters of Finnkin, Isaboe and the orphan Froi. These and other equally vibrant characters leapt off the page, their feelings and motivations clear and convinc Melina Marchetta is a master wordsmith who expresses her stories with elegance and clarity, but there is more to an enjoyable novel than a skilful use of words. It’s the content of Marchetta’s writing that I have difficulty with in this series.

In the first book, ‘Finnikin of the Rock’, Marchetta introduced us to a damaged world and the characters of Finnkin, Isaboe and the orphan Froi. These and other equally vibrant characters leapt off the page, their feelings and motivations clear and convincing. At the end of that book, the land of Lumatere’s curse was lifted and its people were on the path to a brighter future, but we had to grind our way through a lot of misery to get there.

This book starts three years later. Froi feels he has found his home in Lumatere. He is part of the Guard sworn to protect the royal family and has learned to control his quick temper with a warrior's discipline. His Queen sends him on a secret mission to the kingdom of Charyn, the main perpetrator of the crimes against the Lumaterians in the first book of the series. There he finds the ultimate dysfunctional kingdom full of twisted people who hate their half-mad princess, and even more shockingly, he discovers bonds of kinship that he would rather not acknowledge.

I had hoped that this book would have a lighter tone than Finnikin of the Rock, but no; once again, we find ourselves plunged into a world of misery. At least in this book, we have Isaboe and Finnikin as beacons of sanity and love in an otherwise cast of tortured souls. The people of both kingdoms have a lot to recover from, but some of them are taking a long time to do it. I found myself irritated with the stubbornness of Trevanion and Lucian. I wanted to yell at them to just get over it already.

My reaction to this book was the same as my reaction to Hunger Games. I can see that it’s an excellent book, but it’s just not an enjoyable read for me. I don’t want to spend my time in a world where cruelty and suffering are the defining characteristics. I kept reading not because I enjoyed it, but because I was hoping that things would get better for the characters. They didn’t. Just when I thought things were improving, there comes a betrayal that leads to a mass slaughter, and it’s not the first or the last betrayal in the book. Had the story ended on a note of comfort, I would have felt better about the book, but I didn’t even get that much. At least the epilogue assured me that Froi was not dead, but I put the book down wondering why the author wrote it and why I kept reading it.

I realised that there were valid themes in the book, the idea of compassion arising through seeing the suffering of others, and enemies coming to see each other as other people who, like them, simply did their best in difficult circumstances. The trouble was that these themes took too long to develop and got lost amongst what seemed to be (at least in a YA book) gratuitous misery. Does more angst make a better book? No, it just makes it more painful to read.

The best thing about the book, apart from the wisdom of Isaboe, Finnikin and Tessadora was the developing character of the Princess. The changes that come about in her, due to Froi’s friendship and a change in her circumstances, are extremely well done and probably the most hopeful thing in the book. I give it 3 stars. If you don’t mind your stories dark, you’ll probably give it more, and though it’s not Dystopian, I think that if you enjoyed Hunger Games, you will probably enjoy this one.

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Feb 04, 2016 Sanika rated it liked it

Froi of the Exiles was much darker than Finnikin of the Rocks. It presented other side of the coin. The transformation in Froi as a character was amazing. I found Quintana quite savage, well she has to be, given the circumstances. Although many secrets were revealed in this book, but I liked the first book better.

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Oct 22, 2011 Jem rated it it was amazing

Shelves: coming-out-cant-wait, buy, gotta-read, aussie-author, best-of-2011, why-did-this-have-to-happen, unique

Melina Marchetta, you have done it again. And again. And again. This book is amazing, it's different, but it's good different. The characters, plot, setting are all brilliant. I have never read a book which leaves the reader with so many questions at the end of the novel. You know what? Don't wait for my completed review, I'm still reeling from the book. Just. Read. It. ...more

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