SIGN OF THE KNIFE

A young woman tasked with assassinating an evil prince finds herself falling for him instead in Leach’s soulful fantasy.

The novel centers on Mira, an orphaned farm girl in the kingdom of Gilan, where tribute collectors strip poverty-stricken families of their possessions and cart off young “maids” to add to the cruel King Derrik’s harem. Mira’s preternatural knife-throwing skills get her recruited by handsome jewelry merchant Roland into the Order of the Dragon, a resistance organization seeking to overthrow Derrik and install its shadowy leader, Domhnall, on the throne. When a bag of explosives Mira is transporting for Roland accidentally detonates, killing one of Mira’s loved ones, among many others, she’s left with a massive burden of guilt. An opportunity for redemption arises when she catches the eye of Derrik’s son, Prince Joren, who’s reputed to be a lothario; he invites her to join him and his guards on a trip to the capital city of Climonta; Roland instructs her to murder Joren and gives her a magic stone knife called Ordalf to do the job in fulfillment of a prophecy. However, Mira’s mission is complicated by the fact that Joren turns out to be kindhearted, brave, gentlemanly, and attractive. Leach’s fictional world has a fairytale feel, with its charms, oaths, folk idioms (“Did Woon himself bite you out there tonight?”), along with its sudden revelations and dizzying reversals of fortune. However, it also has complex, conflicted characters and prose that’s energetic and evocative, whether in piquant romantic interludes—“I took another sip and gazed at the stars with the man I was sent to kill”—or fraught scenes of anguish, as when Mira, in the explosion’s aftermath, scrubs off the blood of other people, including “the boy with the bread, the girl without a leg, of all the people whose remains would be burned in the pyre.” Readers will root for Mira as she struggles to figure out which man to love and which to hurt.

An imaginative yarn full of sharp twists and engaging psychological depth.