The Scald Crow
Beyond the Faerie Rath: Book 1
In Hanna Park’s erotic fantasy novel The Scald Crow, a disgraced woman flees to Ireland, where she discovers her connection to faeries and falls in love.
After being fired from her broadcasting job, virginal Calla, an adopted Canadian with a propensity for “blurting out the obscenest prophecies,” moves to Donegal County to claim a mysterious inheritance. She finds it to be a place of “dangerous beauty” whose magic ensnares her. After her rental car breaks down, she’s rescued by Colm, who has secrets of his own. His starry, electric blue eyes, combined with the question that arises unbidden to Calla’s lips (“Are you a dangerous man[?]”), ignite immediate sexual tension.
Moving between perspectives, the prose is sensual and glittering, reveling in the romance of green Irish landscapes—home to witches and faeries—and Gaelic lilts. Calla makes fast friends with the locals, including with Saoirse, a Wiccan pub owner who protects and welcomes her.
In time, Calla learns that she has ties to the faerie realm. She also communes with Colm’s brother, who now exists among the faeries, and has visions of dark “soldiers from another time,” alluding to her ultimate purpose in the land. Among such excitement and richness, a derogatory reference to an Irish Traveller is jarring.
While Colm, like others, is prone to slipping in and out of his Irish brogue, he is consistent in meeting Calla in dreams, furthering their mutual lust. It first crests around the time of a momentous discovery about Calla’s heritage, complicating their bond.
The daughter who came from “a love triangle of mythic proportions” returns to the land of her birth and meets the man she is destined to be with in the sexy, series-opening fantasy novel The Scald Crow.
Reviewed by
Michelle Anne Schingler
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
