“What is a bargain if not an oath? And what is an oath if not a promise with a price? Call these what you will. All are cut from the same cloth -a cloth woven of intention, will, and sacrifice.”
The long-awaited third installment of Tracy Deonn’s remarkable The Legendborn Cycle was released this past Tuesday. I finished Oathbound (Simon & Schuster 2025) on Wednesday; I could not put it down. I said previously that Bloodmarked “is soaked in grief and anger, with legends and lore at the crossroads where history tends to be remembered by those with the most power and a different history rests in the roots and blook-soaked soil.” In my review of the second installment, I echoed back to my review of Legendborn, stating:
“Deonn boldly stares down the traditional fantasy canon while giving the reader an Arthurian legend unlike anything Tennyson or Malory could have imagined. She gives her reader Merlin and the magic expected from the likes of a kingsmage. But she also gives us rootcraft and generational power. She gives us Bree.”
And she keeps giving us Bree. And while the grief and anger remain in Oathbound, there is a resilience, a relentlessness, a reckoning that roars. Deonn continues to throw the canon on its head, which I love. And while I anticipated that book three would give us more of the Morgaines, which it does, it gives us more bonds of loyalty, maternal connections, and reminds us that no man, or woman, is an island. Bree has to lose herself entirely to find herself. So does Nick. So does Sel.
And that ending, with Bree, Nick and Sel as that triangle, tells me this round table is about to be shattered even more – King Arthur needed his knights; Bree needs her people. I’m not going to say anything more because this book, from its layout to its plot, needs to be experienced. But know this book was unexpected and somehow exactly right.
And yes, we’re back at Carolina and also in Asheville. The books still feel like home.
A Girl Named Tommi 