AG Slatter’s The Crimson Road is a novel about facing one’s fate head-on and the people who help along the way.
Violet Zennor grew up with a most unusual education—trained in combat and schooled in lores and folktales of the fearsome lands to the far north, where monsters and humans live side by side. Her father Hedrek honed her into a weapon so that she could journey to right his terrible wrong, quite literally laying the sins of the father upon his child. When Hedrek passes away, Violet believes herself free of his tyranny and his mad plans for her. But, even before he is in the ground, forces on all sides hound her, and she must make a choice to complete the terrible task set by her father or risk her friends and family to those who want her dead.
The Crimson Road is another novel set in Slatter’s dark fantasy Sourdough universe, and brings together threads from the past three novels: All the Murmuring Bones, The Path of Thorns and The Briar Book of the Dead. The protagonists of each —Miren O’Malley, Asher Todd and Ellie Briar, respectively—all cross paths with Violet during this new story.
They each provide vital support to help her achieve her task as she makes her way to a place only previously hinted at in petrified whispers. There are the Darklands where the Leech Lords rule. The overlapping of the first three novels into this fourth one is deeply satisfying, like dropping in on old friends after a lapse of time and learning what happened to them.
The Crimson Road bolsters Slatter’s luscious collection of novels that intertwine fairytale with richly-imagined settings, brilliant and formidable female characters, and winning storylines where anything could happen.
