Why I read it: I picked this one up on special at Dymocks recently ($5!) and I'd heard a lot about it. I actually started listening to this on audio but, as interesting as the story was and as good as the narrator was, the production values were so bad (strange editing cuts, abrupt scene changes and background noises like shuffling paper and coughing!) that I gave up on the audio and picked up the book instead.
What it's about: (from Goodreads) Once he had scorched the world.
Once he had driven back overwhelming darkness.Once he had loved with such passion, his name was legend...
TAIREN SOUL
Now a thousand years later, a new threat calls him from the Fading Lands, back into the world that had cost him so dearly. Now an ancient, familiar evil is regaining its strength, and a new voice beckons him--more compelling, more seductive, more maddening than any before.
As the power of his most bitter enemy grows and ancient alliances crumble, the wildness in his blood will not be denied. The tairen must claim his truemate and embrace the destiny woven for him in the mists of time.
What worked for me (and what didn't): Ellysetta Baristani is the adopted daughter of Celierian woodcarver. He and his wife found her abandoned in the woods as a baby and her origins are therefore mysterious and unknown. She has been afflicted with violent seizures since childhood and has terrible nightmares. Rain Tairen Soul is shown her face in the mystical Eye of the World when he begs for a way to save the dying Fey and Tairen races. He travels to Celieria to find her and when he realises that she's his Truemate, he's stunned, to say the least. No other Tairen Soul has ever been truemated.
