LAMENT: THE FAERIE QUEEN’S DECEPTION by Maggie Stiefvater"Sixteen-year-old Deirdre Monaghan, a gifted harpist who regularly plays for weddings and other events, has the kind of stage fright that makes her physically ill before a performance, which is an inauspicious way to start a romance; but while vomiting before a competition a gorgeous boy comes into the restroom to hold her hair. He is Luke Dillon, a flautist who proceeds to accompany her in a truly stellar performance. As four-leaf clovers start appearing everywhere, Deirdre develops telekinetic powers and encounters strange, unworldly people who seem to bear her ill will. Her best friend, James, also a talented musician; her beloved grandmother; and her mother all are in danger, as Deirdre is targeted by the queen of Faerie. Deirdre eventually discovers that she is a cloverhand, a person who can see the denizens of faerie, and Luke, not the only immortal who has her in his sights, is a gallowglass, an assassin assigned by the queen of Faerie to kill Deirdre but who falls in love with her instead. This beautiful and out-of-the- ordinary debut novel, with its authentic depiction of Celtic Faerie lore and dangerous forbidden love in a contemporary American setting, will appeal to readers of Nancy Werlin's Impossible and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series." - Booklist, starred review.
Excerpt from LAMENT: THE FAERIE QUEEN’S DECEPTION
James took my hand in his written-upon ones and turned the ring on my finger, absently. It reminded me of Luke’s hand on mine, earlier. How can two hands feel so different? “And the clover? The one that you moved this morning, with your brain? Do you still have it?”
“Thought I moved,” I corrected. I shook my head. “Yeah.” I shifted my weight so I could pull it from my pocket.
“So move it.”
I looked hard at him.
“Well, if you can’t move it like you said, it won’t move, and you won’t have to worry about it anymore, will you? But if it does – well, then you’re a freak.” James grinned. He plucked the slightly crushed clover from my finger and set it in the sparse grass beneath the tree. “Go go, magic clover.”
“I feel foolish.” I did. We were like two kids hunched over a Ouija board, part of us hoping for something strange to happen, proving the world a mysterious place, and the rest of us hoping desperately for nothing to happen, proving the world safe and free of monsters. I cupped my hand like earlier that morning, a little goal for the clover to shoot into. “Come on, clover.”
Breeze kissed the sweat on my forehead, and the clover tumbled end over end into my hand.
James closed his eyes. “It makes me frigid when you do that.”
“It was the breeze.” It was just the breeze.
He shook his head and opened his eyes again. “I always get cold when I get one of my weird feelings, and that just about hit glacier-cold on the weirdness chart. Do it again, you’ll see. Next to my leg, where there’s no breeze.”
I picked up the clover and set it down in the shadow of his leg. Cupping my hand, I said faintly, “Come on, clover.” The clover and several other leaves rustled and then skipped across the ground into my hand, a huge dry collection of leaves the color of summer pressed against my fingers.
James’ voice was as soft as the rustling of the leaves, and when I looked at him, I could see goose bumps standing on his tanned legs. “Telekinesis. Suddenly the world seems a lot more interesting.”
What it seemed was a lot less ordinary.
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If Maggie had the power to move one thing in this world by telekinesis, what would that one thing be?
