Cobweb Bride by Vera Nazarian

Many are called...
She alone can save the world and become Death's bride.

COBWEB BRIDE (Cobweb Bride Trilogy, Book One) is a history-flavored fantasy novel with romantic elements of the Persephone myth, about Death's ultimatum to the world.

What if you killed someone and then fell in love with them?

In an alternate Renaissance world, somewhere in an imaginary "pocket" of Europe called the Kingdom of Lethe, Death comes, in the form of a grim Spaniard, to claim his Bride. Until she is found, in a single time-stopping moment all dying stops. There is no relief for the mortally wounded and the terminally ill....

Covered in white cobwebs of a thousand snow spiders she lies in the darkness... Her skin is cold as snow... Her eyes frozen... Her gaze, fiercely alive...

While kings and emperors send expeditions to search for a suitable Bride for Death, armies of the undead wage an endless war... A black knight roams the forest at the command of his undead father… Spies and political treacheries abound at the imperial Silver Court.... Murdered lovers find themselves locked in the realm of the living...

Look closer — through the cobweb filaments of her hair and along each strand shine stars...

And one small village girl, Percy—an unwanted, ungainly middle daughter—is faced with the responsibility of granting her dying grandmother the desperate release she needs.

As a result, Percy joins the crowds of other young women of the land in a desperate quest to Death's own mysterious holding in the deepest forests of the North...

And everyone is trying to stop her.

 

I don’t often read fantasy books, but this one had such a promising premise that I had to pick it up. And I really wasn’t disappointed.

This was a lovely first part to a trilogy which promises to have an epic span. We are introduced to a large group of characters, but, unlike other fantasy books, it is not difficult to keep them straight. They are written so vividly and introduced so carefully, that it is easy to cement them in our minds without problem. Percy, short for Persephone, is the protagonist, a “plain” young woman who immediately catches the reader’s attention by her strong personality. Definitely a good character to follow around for three books.

The story itself is pretty quick paced, with only one or two moments where the pace dragged just a bit. There are a few storylines that seem like they can never converge but which the author does a careful job of joining by the end of the book, bringing most of the characters together and setting up the next book without leaving us without some kind of closure. This, I think, is a good move on her part.

Even if you don’t necessarily read fantasy books, I do recommend you give this one a chance. It is a fun story that does not disappoint.