Shiver me timbers but On These Dark Sands is a swashbuckling good time. If you love pirates and magic and matriarchal societies and dark family secrets, you’ll love this book. I’m a slow reader, but I easily devoured it in only a week’s time. The world is unique, the characters vivid, and the twists unimaginable.
Falling under the romance side of speculative fiction, Rasanen leaves you wondering if the two love interests will ever be able to repair what seems to be irreparably broken.
Declan McCallagh, a young pirate who fled his home at the very young age of ten, spent every return his ship was forced to make dreading those moments. Once he became captain of the Siren’s Song, he made those trips almost nonexistent. But when an attack on his ship forces him to return and meet Aoife Cascade, the daughter of the council, his life changes forever.
Declan, who has secrets he both hates to keep and but would hate to reveal, along with all the other pirates of his ship, are captivating, morally gray characters. All with a strong moral code that threatens to break them when they are forced to go against it.
The tropes are plentiful but also adapted to be something new. Rasanen’s writing throughout is brilliant and witty as she gives you little bits of foreshadowing that still leaves you shocked when the twists fully reveal themselves.
An heir on the run.
In one month, Aoife Cascade will turn 20 and take her seat on the Council of Cregah, an honor she’s been preparing for her whole life. But when she lets a secret slip to her mother with devastating consequences, all her plans for the future crumble. Believing her people to be better off without her, she flees Cregah, stowing away aboard a pirate ship bound for dangerous waters.
A Pirate Captain who needs her help.
Captain Declan McCallagh is young compared to the pirate lords, but after 12 years on the grueling sea, he has earned a well-respected ship and the attention of the lords, who’d like nothing better than to see his ruin. All he wants is to leave the Aisling Sea – and his past-behind him. But when his sister demands he find the enchanted dagger her rebel faction needs to overthrow the ruling Council, he’ll have to decide whether to cast off all family ties or take the perilous voyage to waters guarded by sirens, only passable with the help of the last remaining fae, currently imprisoned by the Council.
With murder and betrayal at every turn, can Aoife and Declan learn to rely on one another?
Or will the secrets they carry destroy their people-and each other?
