No Man’s Daughter by T. H. Abram is the first book in The Oath of Woe series and is also an extremely unusual book in many ways. It tells the story of two young people, each starting a different journey. Sadia lives in the city of Qasira with several other children, her adopted siblings, doing her best to scrape a living as they are collectively looked down upon for being orphans. One day a group of cultists show up and perform a ritual in the square with a small child. When members from the local temples show up it turns into chaos as many of them are killed by the cultists. Sadia decides to rescue the child and take him away to safety but this results in her having to flee the city with one of her brothers as the cultists refuse to let the child escape. At the same time and fairly far away there is Gideon, a young man trying to pass the challenges necessary to become a paladin. However, he seems unable to call up the holy light that is required to do so. When a group of fellow clergymen show up he is recruited to fight against a group of witches that are able to directly combat the powers of the holy light leaving Gideon and many of his fellow recruits rather scared.
I am going to start off by saying that this book was really well written and I really enjoyed reading it. Each sequence of events seemed to be well developed and thought out. I could definitely tell there was a lot of thought put into the overall storyline for these two characters. To add to that the descriptions were extremely vivid and often times I could easily picture the scene being described, the city where Sadia was or the temple where Gideon was. The character descriptions were sometimes lacking so I wasn’t always easily able to picture what they looked like, but the setting always came pretty easily. For the two narrators or protagonists it was interesting seeing their perspectives because they seemed really well developed and fleshed out. Reading about their doubts and indecisions really helped show the multi-dimensionality of their characters. I felt like I had really got to know them pretty well by the end of it. There were however a few things that rather confused me about the book though. The title of the book is obviously referring to Sadia as she is a young girl with no parents, hence No Man’s Daughter. On the other hand, the title of the series seems to be referring to Gideon as The Oath of Woe is one of the two oaths offered at the temple where he was training. This by itself was only sort of confusing. The part that really seemed to bother me though is that throughout the entire story there is no explanation, at least not that I noticed, of how the two characters are linked. I assume that they are at least in the same general region of the world but the two stories seem so wildly different and with no obvious connections that I really was confused about why they were in the same book with alternating chapters. This is something I really hope will be addressed in further books in the series. Overall, a good book and a good start to an intriguing storyline. I am happy to give it 3.5 out of 5 starts for now.
This was a pretty good fantasy novel and one that I enjoyed. If you are looking to start a new fantasy series than you might just consider trying this one out. I would recommend that you keep in mind that you are definitely going to be left with a lot of unanswered questions at the end of the book so be prepared for that. With the book being fantasy I am not sure how much it would appeal to readers who prefer other genres. It is set in a fantasy setting with some rather questionable fantasy elements so if you don’t like that kind of story you may not like this one. In terms of age range, this book would probably be considered an adult fantasy but the ages of the characters make it feel more like a young adult work so it would probably hold some appeal for either of those age ranges. There really isn’t much content that would make it unsuitable for young adult readers though there is some potentially sensitive content due to the slight abuse inflicted on Sadia and her siblings. It is not necessarily graphic but it is present at times. I still think it was a pretty good book and hope you consider trying it out. As always feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. I acquired this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.