The Serpent Bride: A Dull Tale That Had Epic Potential

The Serpent Bride By Sara Douglass

So how did I get this book? Well I went into a book store and they had a sale. In order to get the sale I needed three books. So I found two books I’ve been wanting for a while and when it came to number three, I was stumped as I could not decide out of the thousands of choices I had. So eventually I started thinking about what authors I have really liked in the past and Sara Douglas comes to mind. She was the only authors I read, who translated the mediocre medieval fantasy genre into something exciting for me. And I loved her Wayfarer Redemption series (until the story derailed a bit). So why not see what else she wrote? And she appeared to have written a dozen other things. And out of the selection I chose one called “The Serpent Bride.”

So what is the Serpent Bride? Well the story focuses on an arch priestess of an order called the Coil. Her name is Ishbel and she took refuge there after her family all suddenly died in the plague. The mountains where she grew up are called the Serpent’s Nest. There she learned the arts of sacrificing people in order to read the future, look into people’s past, and most of all, communicate with the great serpent god that all of the Coil worship. But one day, the Serpent God commands her to leave her isolated home to a central kingdom to marry king Maxell. She hates the idea of it. All of it. But she remains loyal to the serpent and does it. He marries her immediately despite the out lash from other royal folks as to how she is associated with the outlands and the coil. Even with in a week of Ishbel's marriage she becomes pregnant and the great serpent reassures her everything is going to plan.

Soon after murder start to trail Ishbel where ever she goes. Convinced that she is innocent, Maxell and Ishbel make run to somewhere safe. That is until she is kidnapped in the dead of night from Maxell. The kidnappers are from the south, who are researching the dark glass mountain. The dark glass mountain is a temple that builds itself up over time, but underneath the base is the great god of chaos. And the god of chaos has its fair share of followers and haters. The followers have the intentions of using Ishbel as a sacrifice to awaken it. Maxell is meanwhile journeying to the south to get his wife back. There’s also a number of side stories to but those aren’t important.

So well start with the good. Sara Douglas is a phenomenal writer and the tale here is detailed and highly imaginative. Her characters and world are very well developed.

And the bad? We’ll start with a simple need to know detail for any reader. This does take place in the same world as the Wayfarer Redemption and does little to introduce those facts. So if you haven’t read her other books, and you don’t know about the Icari, the Sunsoars, or whatever terms, you better start looking things up on Wiki, because you’ll be confused. Another thing was in the six novel series of the Wayfarer Redemption, it focused on Axis. So I was glad that this took place hundreds of years after those books and Axis has passed on. It seemed fresh with her new characters. But Douglas must love this guy, because she wrote him back in by having a warlock bring him back from the dead to crowbar him back in the story. I think that was a little ridiculous. Also the book is not all that exciting. The sacrifice and rumors of war only fulfill themselves in the last seventy pages of the eight hundred page book and the majority of the book focuses on drama. It’s a drama with little chemistry and is very soapy. Basically the story focuses on three intertwining love triangles, where no one knows where their hearts lie. Oh and by the end of the book there are three pregnancies which complicate things much more than ever. By the end it’s just so soapy and heavy, it ridiculous. Why the hell does no one Douglas’s book know nothing about birth control or just a little self control in general? Sheesh. It’s a little ridiculous.

Overall, it’s interesting. You’ll be engage on the edge of your seat to see what will happen next in the beginning. And then you’ll find out nothing happens. It just kind of feels like a broken promise more than anything else. So unless the over the top, over done love triangle is you’re your thing. Then by all means read it. For the rest of us, it just held so much more potential and feels like a broken promise.

1 ½ smoothie out of four.

Overall rating: A Dull Tale That Had Epic Potential