Title: The Sin Eater’s Daughter (buy here)
Author: Melinda Salisbury, her website can be found here.
Release date: February 24th 2015.
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Page count: 336
Format read: paperback
Summary: Twylla is known as Daunen embodied, and can never be touched by anyone other than the royal family. This is because she has been ingesting a poison since she first entered the castle, that only she can withstand – proof that she is indeed a god reborn. The story revolves around her life as Daunen and her role as executor for the royal family. The poison in her skin means that any person she touches will be poisoned and killed within moments.
This concept really seemed like something different, as I liked the fact that Twylla had come from a poor background and become essentially royal, she is engaged to the prince and told she must stay pure until her marriage. Once she is married she will cease to be the embodied Daunen due to her no longer being a virgin priestess. In reality, she gave up her family and especially her sister because of her imagined life as a princess. Twylla didn’t want to be the next sin eater. I loved the concept of the sin eater because it was so different. A sin eater is the person who is present at most funerals; I was unsure if it was everyone’s or if there are more for so many people i.e. they cover a particular area? I’ve also started to wonder more recently if this is a real concept somewhere…
Update: I did some research and it is, which both makes it cooler and less cool. On the one hand it’s taken from real culture, and the book is not totally inaccurate as they’re not sure exactly how common this was and exactly where Sin eater’s were found. It seems I was also right that Sin eater’s cover a certain distance of space around a community. On the other hand, I thought Melinda Sailsbury came up with an awesome concept by herself so now I’m disappointed in this.
SPOILER TERRITORY
Either way, Twylla’s mum is pretty open about her sexuality and so on, having various children with different men and never speaking about the men in question. However, as the oldest Twylla is trained and expected to take on her mother’s mantel. Given that the role is to eat the sins of those who have just died it doesn’t sound very appealing. If a sin eater does not eat every single sin then the soul of the departed will not be able to move on. The coffin is covered by a feast, each different type of food shows the type of sin that person committed during life, though many of them are probably speculated, and I’m not sure how someone would know. It’s kind of implied that some are assumed. But various sins are taken very seriously, and the sins are eaten in order of severity, least first.
The character of Twylla’s mother is very interesting even though she is really only encountered during flashbacks, I found the relationship and detachment of the character very curious. However, most interesting is the various storylines running side by side.
There is the main storyline of Twylla’s life as Duanen embodied, as well as the idea of the sleeping price. He’s a mythological character who is forced to roam the forests pretty much forever, kidnapping young girls to sustain his life with his song. Or maybe it’s his son that plays the music and brings them to his father. My original understanding was much more confused, but the next two books kind of give you more context. Only viriginal women can hear it as far as I can tell, but Twylla hears it even though she isn’t one?
On the other hand, essentially the queen has manipulated so much of Twylla’s life that she doesn’t know what is real or not. She (the queen) realises that she doesn’t want Twylla to be too important and so she attempts to ruin her chances at becoming queen, so that she may kill her new husband and marry her son instead of Twylla to keep the bloodline pure. Following on from that, the queen hires a boy called Lief to be assigned as a new guard for Twylla, poisons her other guard Dorin, and tells Lief to seduce her. At first, Lief and Twylla clearly like each other, and Dorin suddenly gets sick which means they get lots of time to spend alone together. I thought that was too convenient for a YA novel because of course things happen to push the love interests together. But, the author justified it fairly well by making it part of the queen’s ultimate plan.
The fact that they revealed that she was actually not Duanen embodied at all and not poisoned is a very interesting psychological question, though it also made me slightly disappointed. Overall though, the story was compelling and interesting and I’d be interested to see what happened since at the very end we know that Twylla did not choose either male to be her love interest, a positive change in my eyes.
Characters:
Twylla – a meek and damaged character who made me slightly annoyed throughout the story, but one who develops considerably over the novel. She’s also not as dumb as most protagonists.
Lief – a typical charismatic ‘exotic’ foreigner who seduces the main character, has a mysterious past, and makes it his point to ignore all social conventions of a different culture he lives in.
Dorin – a lovely typical character you know will get killed off because he didn’t do anything to deserve it.
Daunen – a very interesting concept, and I’d be interested to see who actually is Daunen embodied or if Twylla was all along since the way of telling was created by the queen, so there was no way of knowing how they would tell.
Sin eater – A really horrible character honestly, but one who takes her job seriously. She’s a terrible mother to her children, and couldn’t even be bothered to tell Twylla her sister died. The sister who she has been staying at the palace for in order to make sure she gets enough money to survive.
Merek – The prince, who typically turns out to be a nice guy who genuinely liked our protagonist, but will probably come in second place anyway. Though, he doesn’t seem able to understand the concept of personal choice with who they love and marry. Too much a point of ownership.
The queen – The queen is literally the worst human ever, honestly. She’s a liar, deliberately takes Twylla from her mother because she knows that the sin eater has ultimate authority over everyone when they die, and wishes to undermine that threat. Not only that she kills her second husband and wants to bang her son, as well as murdering and framing various people for things they didn’t do. Thankfully she gets her just desserts but I hated her so much.
The Sleeping Prince – A mysterious figure of legend we are shown to be pretty likley is alive and on the way to reclaim his throne.
Rating:
Characterisation: 6/10
Logic: 7/10
Predictability: 8/10
Gender-biased violence (a high score indicates a negative impact on the story): 2/10
Bechdel Test score: 7/10
Overall score: 7 sins out of /10
If you liked this, you may also like:
- The Selection by Kiera Cass (buy here)
- Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard (buy here)
- Take Back the Skies by Lucy Saxon (buy here)
If you hated this, but love medieval style fantasy, try:
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