The Wolf of Oren-Yaro

The Wolf of Oren-Yaro is narrated by Queen Talyien (Tali), a warlord's daughter who was betrothed shortly after her birth in order to end a civil war. But on the night she and her husband were to be officially crowned, he fled, leaving her and their young son behind. Five years after Tali was crowned queen and left to rule without him, Tali travels to a land across the sea to meet with him. Everything seems to go wrong before their meeting, and things just get worse when assassins attack during their reunion. Tali escapes but is separated from her people, all alone without money in a country with very different unspoken rules from her own.

I absolutely loved this book, largely because of Tali's amazing voice???hers is one of the best voices I've ever encountered in my reading. It hooked me from the very first line, and kept me invested in her and her endless cycle of disasters. The details of the world are vivid as seen through her eyes, and although it has tantalizing secrets, the most compelling parts were those that delved into what shaped her???and the way I wondered just how reliable a narrator she actually was, not because I thought she was intentionally being unreliable, but because I wondered how much she was trying to convince herself.

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