Synopsis via Goodreads
The truth will test you…
For fans of Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games: high fantasy and dystopia meet in this high-stakes tale of a civilization built on lies and the girl who single-handedly brings it down.
When Eva’s twin brother, Eamon, falls to his death just a few months before he is due to participate in The Testing, no one expects Eva to take his place. She’s a Maiden, slated for embroidery classes, curtseys, and soon a prestigious marriage befitting the daughter of an Aerie ruler. But Eva insists on honoring her brother by becoming a Testor. After all, she wouldn’t be the first Maiden to Test, just the first in 150 years.
Eva knows the Testing is no dance class. Gallant Testors train for their entire lives to search icy wastelands for Relics: artifacts of the corrupt civilization that existed before The Healing drowned the world. Out in the Boundary Lands, Eva must rely on every moment of the lightning-quick training she received from Lukas—her servant, a Boundary native, and her closest friend now that Eamon is gone.
But there are threats in The Testing beyond what Lukas could have prepared her for. And no one could have imagined the danger Eva unleashes when she discovers a Relic that shakes the Aerie to its core.
Heather Terrell’s Relic is not a wonderful novel, but it’s not horrible. It seems great until you get to the last five chapters.
The prologue shows Eamon, a Gallant who is about to become a Testor, climbing The Ring in preparation for the Testing, but an unknown person kills him. Eva, a Maiden, honors her twin brother’s memory by becoming a Testor. Although the Lex, a code of law reminiscent of the Bible, allows Maidens to become Testors, Eva faces prejudice against it since she is the first Maiden to compete in one hundred fifty years.
Though the narrator of the novel is Eva herself, the use of first-person point of view helped the book. It’s writing style is akin to that of novels written by someone from a foreign country. True, the setting is in the arctic regions of Finland, but it slowed the pace of the reading.
Relic is another post-apocalyptic novel with the typical dystopian theme.
Genres: Fantasy, Dystopian, Young Adult
Stars (out of 5): ***
Cat on the Bookshelf 