Friday Firsts – Daughters of the Storm by Kim Wilkins

Friday Firsts is a new meme that will run every Friday here on Tenacious Reader. It will feature the first few sentences/paragraph of my current book and my first impressions as well. It’s meant to be a quick and easy way to share a bit about what I am reading, and I would love to hear others join in sharing their current reads as well.

I have to admit, this one has pulled me in really quick. There are multiple POVs and so far I’m happy with all of them and am just super curious to keep reading. Always a great sign! This prologue is a different POV, I haven’t quite figured out how much we will get from it since I think this is really the story of the daughters.

Prologue

A thousand times he had murmured her name in the soft darkness; now, though, he didn’t know her name. He didn’t even know his own.

The rain had set in outside the bowed wooden shutters. Endless mornings under dark-gray, swirling clouds that unburdened cold water from one end of Almissia to the other had turned the roads to stinking mud: Gudrun could not send for a physician, and she could not tell anyone he was ill, because he was the king. She could not even tell Byrta, his counselor, because Byrta would send for his daughters.

Gudrun knew his daughters hated her.

And so she had been trapped for three long days in the gloomy bowerhouse with him as he raved. The wild man in the looking glass made him quiver for fear; he shouted obscene words at her; he wept like a babe over a loose thread on his robe. She soothed him with soft words and firm touches, even when he pummeled her with his fists and accused her of trying to steal his food. The fits came suddenly, and left just as suddenly. Then he would sleep for hours among the crumpled woolen blankets while she watched his face, barely recognizing his sagging skin and gray beard.

Where was the noble, strong man he had been? The warrior king, the Storm Bearer, Athelrick of Almissia?

And where was the woman she had been? Whose were these thin-skinned hands, fearfully stroking an old man’s troubled forehead?

Kim Wilkins. Daughters of the Storm

 

My First Impressions

What are you reading right now? Did it start out strong? Feel free to share in the comments, and also feel free to link up!