Foretold
Daughters of Saraqael, Book #3
Raine Thomas
Review brought to you by OBS staff member Annabell
Note: Contains lots of spoilers!
Synopsis:
Centuries before she was born, Skye Tomaganuk was a subject of the most important prophecy in Estilorian history. As one of three half-human daughters born of the Corgloresti, Saraqael, she is part of the fulfillment of Knorbis’ Great Foretelling. What she doesn’t know is just what the Foretelling entails for her and her sisters.
As Skye and her sisters continue their training and visit each of the Estilorian class homelands, they soon learn how much impact their human emotions have on their father’s kind. Skye is particularly interested in the effect of emotions on her Gloresti, Caleb. Although she wants their relationship to progress beyond just that of protector and assignment, he proves particularly resistant to the idea.
She’ll soon have much more to worry about than a lack of romance, however. With the help of a traitor, Grolkinei infiltrates the Estilorian stronghold, imprisoning Skye’s mind and putting all Estilorians at risk. It leads them all toward the greatest battle of their kind, and puts Skye’s faith to the ultimate test.
Review: Foretold is the final book in the Daughters of Saraqael Trilogy and out of all three books, probably the best one. I liked both Amber and Olivia, but Skye turned out to my favorite out of all three of the sisters. She started off as a very weak character in the first book and I think she made the biggest strides out of all three of the girls. Foretold not only shines a more intimate light on Skye as well as her Gloresti, Caleb, but also, on the big battle the books have been leading up with Grolkinei.
Foretold starts off with a heavy and heartbreaking event involving a mental attack on Skye by the Mercesti leader, Grolkinei, the Elders step up protections to prevent any mental attacks from happening again on any of the girls. The protections are successful so the Elders choose to have Amber, Olivia, Skye, Gabriel, James, and Caleb travel to the homelands of the different Estilorian’s so they can be protected from the mental attacks by the Mercesti. As they travel through the homelands, Amber, Olivia, and Skye learn more about the Great Foretelling and the battle to come. While everything seems to be going well and the different homelands are becoming more accepting of the sisters, they soon find out not everyone they have chosen to trust is truly their friend and Amber, Skye, and Olivia are in greater danger than they could have imagined.
I had so much fun with Skye and Caleb! They’re relationship was the best developed and far more realistic than the others. I loved how complete opposites they were. Caleb is strong, solid, takes no-nonsense and shows little emotion whereas Skye is optimistic, bubbly, naive and innocent. She loves to sing off key and dance around in her crazy fashions. Caleb struggles to understand the way human emotions work and how to protect Skye when he doesn’t understand any of the feelings he is having towards her. I love how Caleb didn’t worry about hurting Skye’s feelings. He was always bluntly honest with her and treated her as strong as he knew she was even when she didn’t believe it.
I also really appreciated and loved the Christian themes throughout the book. I don’t know if that is what the author intentionally meant to do though. There are just many great messages throughout each of the books, especially in Foretold. To have faith in yourself, to trust that hope is never far away, and love is the most powerful weapon we have, such great lessons to remember and live by.
I really liked and enjoyed most of the book. One of the things that bothered me though was how close the plot was to Central. All the girls are married. All of them are pregnant. All of them have waaay too much sex. The plot just sounded redundant. There were things that were different like some of the fight scenes but even then it was somewhat redundant because every one of the girls has to face a villain face to face, but helped to be rescued by the magic of their sisters, the Elders, and the Gloresti guardians. The pacing was still dragged down by far too much detail of things that just didn’t matter to the plot. One of the things that has always seemed absolutely ridiculous to me was the singing the girls would to protect their thoughts. They would sing songs from various pop music artists and those scenes always felt very out of place with the rest of the book. Another big problem in all three books was the way the dialogue and narration was written. Often the voices of the characters all sounded the same and it was hard to remember who was speaking or who the narration was talking about. The tone also often sounded too informative so it would interfere with being able to fully be swept away in the book.
But regardless of flaws in each of the books, I think author Raine Thomas has a brilliant imagination and wonderfully fun ideas. There is a whimsical feel to the romances she creates and a certain realism to them (especially with Skye and Caleb). There was heart behind the characters and the storyline which so many books seem to lack nowadays. Overall, it was a lot of fun reading the Daughters of Saraqael Trilogy!
The Daughters of Saraqael Trilogy are books filled with plenty of magic, loveable and relatable characters, and worlds vividly described. I would recommend the books to anyone who is a fan of science fiction and fantasy; you will have quite an adventure!
