THE WAKING LAND

RELEASED 29 JUNE 388 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Callie Bates Publisher Hodder & Stoughton “Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man,” the saying goes – but what about between the ages of five and 19? Just how much could you influence someone’s beliefs and future if you raised them from infancy to early adulthood?

The answer, it seems, is actually not that much – or at least nothing a quick bit of historical re-education can’t correct. Elanna was held hostage for 14 years, raised by King Antoine in order to keep her rebellious father in line after an attempted coup. But now Antoine is dead, and Elanna – suspected of his murder – is returning to a home and a land she barely remembers, determined not to be drawn into an uprising she is sure she does not believe in or to rejoin a family she no longer feels a part of.

It’s an engaging story, and well told, but Elanna is a little too perfect, very quick to cast aside her upbringing and conveniently possessed of incredible magical powers. The rebellion, too, grates – its leaders talk about bringing fairness to ordinary people, but the revolution is run by lords and noblemen, the new “elected” rulers still conveniently descended from the previous ones. And after a few hundred pages of developing story, the climax (to this book, not to the whole story – this is the first of a trilogy) feels hurried and confused.