Fortune and Fate
This book starts a new story arc, with new characters.
This book introduces Wen, who is a former King's Rider. She failed to protect King Baryn during a rebellion for which she feels crushing shame. She is also suffering because of the marriage of Justin, a man she loved, to another.
Wen wanders over the country, looking for wrongs to right, but does not stay anywhere for very long. Eventually, she saves Karryn, the daughter of a rebel, from kidnapping and ravishment. Jasper Paladar, the uncle and guardian of Karryn, asks Wen to train a corps of bodyguards. She reluctantly agrees, and over time recovers from her heartbreak to fall in love with Jasper.
The action is divided between Wen's work to create a competent guard for Karryn, the heiress of Fortunalt, and a tour of the country by Cammon, the Queen's consort, with Tayse and other riders and guards, plus Senneth, Tayse's wife. Near the end of the book, when Cammon's tour has come to Fortunalt, and a plot to kill Karryn has been foiled, Tayse and Senneth come to believe that the main reason for making the tour was actually so Cammon and the Riders with him could help Wen come to terms with the fact that the King's death was not her fault, and to show her that she has much to offer and can find a permanent place of service and love.
Read more about this topic: The Twelve Houses Series, Plots
Famous quotes containing the words fortune and/or fate:
“All good fortune is a gift of the gods, and ... you don’t win the favor of the ancient gods by being good, but by being bold.”
—Anita Brookner (b. 1938)
“Is it impossible not to wonder why a movement which professes concern for the fate of all women has dealt so unkindly, contemptuously, so destructively, with so significant a portion of its sisterhood. Can it be that those who would reorder society perceive as the greater threat not the chauvinism of men or the pernicious attitudes of our culture, but rather the impulse to mother within women themselves?”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)