Reminiscent of The Lord of the Flies, this tale of Gilna's growth and transformation moves along at break-neck pace. I was pleased and surprised how easily I was able to immerse myself with the story, even with the pure brutality of the Kurathk. I think the hard consonants of the warrior barbarian names, titles and language worked well to portray this 185-page novel's themes. I tend to shy away from stories that embrace pagan themes and ritual, and this is one that does so unequivocally. As such I wanted to finish this and be done with it. At the end, I felt "What a waste" -- but not because of the time invested in reading this book, but due to the ultimate fulfillment of the story. ( )

I really wanted to like this book. The storyline is good, the main character is interesting, the idea of "perfumers" highly interesting, but....I could not get past the names of groups or the leaders of the raiders....I read about half and was really into the storyline, but realized, after Gilna met the male twin (I cannot remember his name or what he was called), that I have no clue as to the hierarchy of this group or who is who....I am so highly irritated, I want to finish, but cannot. The names of things are all spelled with random H's and make all the names look just similiar enough to be confusing. How frustrating.

Great idea, poor usage of random letters. ( )

Dominion is a well written book with clever prose, an interesting story line, and a strong female lead character. The writing is very descriptive, well-thought out and intelligent. However, I feel that this intelligence prevents the reader from seeing the heart. The story line elements are all well designed to be emotional, without actually inspiring emotion in the reader. I felt detached from the main character, and if I were not reading this book to review here on LibraryThing, I most likely would have put it down and never returned, because I just didn't care what happened to the characters. I didn't have the emotional involvement necessary to keep me constantly wondering what was going to happen next. Honestly I think it's the way I would write a novel - too much focus on saying exactly the right things the right way getting in the way of the emotional importance of the story. It is something that I'm working on myself in playing music, so perhaps that's why it was so striking to me in this novel. I do think it is a finely crafted novel, and rewarding to stick with and finish. It would be an enjoyable read for many. ( )

This book was a bit of a slow start, but well worth sticking with. A young girl training as a healer finds her world thrown into chaos as her villiage falls sick and roumors of invading Barbarians thrive. In a dream she is shown a plant that she thinks can save her village, and so she goes out to find it only to be captured by the invaders.

I very much enjoyed this book, and will be recommending it to friends! ( )