HER RADIANT CURSE

A curse shapes two sisters’ lives.

Channi was 2 the day Vanna was born. Adah, their father, tried to sacrifice Channi to the witch Angma in return for saving her mother’s life. When his effort was thwarted by a snake, “the king among his kind,” Angma punished Channi, giving her a face covered in snake scales that her father makes her cover with a mask. Unless Channi delivers her sister to Angma by Vanna’s 17th birthday in just three days’ time, Angma will destroy them. Now 19, lonely Channi is shunned in their village but revered by the island’s poisonous snakes and by Vanna, whose beauty, enhanced by the mysterious golden glow radiating from her heart, attracts widespread love, admiration, and gifts. Adah arranges an auction, inviting local royalty to bid for Vanna’s hand. When wealthy old King Meguh matches the bid of Vanna’s choice, young Crown Prince Rongyo, the dispute is to be settled through combat. Channi leaps into the fray to help her sister, fighting the dragon Meguh puts forward on his side—who she discovers has a connection to her past. Realizing that there is much she doesn’t know, Channi faces even more threats. Fast-paced, frenetic action scenes deliver high body counts. The characterization is occasionally inconsistent, but Lim’s vivid worldbuilding is a unifying, overarching strength, drawing from the landscapes, mythologies, and cultures of Southeast Asia.

Action-fueled fantasy deepened by a compelling setting and well-constructed cosmology.