She rescues this boy who can’t speak (who she eventually names Archer), and he becomes her companion for the rest of her journey. The beginning of the book was set at a fairly odd, slow pace after Nin’s capture, we get a brief sentence on how Sefia was tracking down Nin’s captors for a whole year before more things happen in the story. But the book was the key, and if she could figure out how to use it, she’d be able to open the door, uncovering the magic that lay, rippling and shifting in unseen currents, beyond the world she experienced with her ears and tongue and fingertips.” “It was as if, all this time, she’d been locked out, catching glimpses of some magical world through the crack beneath a door. Sefia recalls her parents teaching her these scribbles as a child, and we get to see her slowly learn how to read. Well, not exactly alone… She has an interesting object with her, one filled with scribbles. But with Nin’s capture, Sefia finds herself alone. We get a little backstory of how Sefia’s parents were both murdered when she was a child and how she lived constantly on the run with Nin. The book starts off with Sefia’s guardian Nin getting captured mysterious people.

This is a fantasy that definitely shouldn’t be missed by readers. All these plot elements are entangled so thoroughly with each other, and we get to see wonderful characters and refreshing discoveries on the way. What does pirates have to do with books having magic in them? I really had no idea what I was getting into, and I’m super glad I got into it in the end. I admit, I was a little hesitant coming into this story. But in Sefia’s world, books are nonexistent and words are just meaningless scribbles. It’s a good thing that we have books in this world, or I wouldn’t know how I would be able to survive. With the help of this book, and the aid of a mysterious stranger with dark secrets of his own, Sefia sets out to rescue her aunt and find out what really happened the day her father was killed-and punish the people responsible. The only clue to both her aunt’s disappearance and her father’s murder is the odd rectangular object her father left behind, an object she comes to realize is a book-a marvelous item unheard of in her otherwise illiterate society. But when Nin is kidnapped, leaving Sefia completely alone, none of her survival skills can help her discover where Nin’s been taken, or if she’s even alive. After her father is brutally murdered, she flees into the wilderness with her aunt Nin, who teaches her to hunt, track, and steal. Genres: Fantasy & Magic, Young Adult, Romance Published by Putnam on September 13th 2016

Destined for a King by Ashlyn Macnamara