Rating: 4.5🌈
A Priest, A Plague, and A Prophecy is a new sweet, fantasy romance from M D Grimm. I admit I was overdue in revisiting this author and this short tale of two enemies, a inter species, happy ending of a Romeo and Jules sort of situation, was a perfect intro back into her writing.
Grimm has built a world of humans and orcs, living close enough that their encounters with each other haven’t gone for the better. Over the years their clashes have grown worse,their basic fears about each other’s races fed by completely different appearances, as well as an inability to communicate due to separate languages and cultures. Their skirmishes grew larger each time, offensively more bloody , due to the size , physicality and style of their fighting , until all each knows is hatred.
It’s not until a fumbling young priest called Eli meets a young orc called Gurrkk in trouble that everything starts to change.
It’s in the rich details as well as the emotional landscape that this story does so well. The author’s ability to convey two people of separate races, determined to understand each other, under enormous stress, then through friendship and finally love. We get all the different cultural elements, language, mating, bonding, children, religion,and leadership.
Grimm has deeply settled her characters within their respective communities and families, and that allows her readers to explore them on a really personal level.
This is a romance between two characters that look at sexuality in a different way. How they handle that difference is another plus for me in the narrative. While it may have an initial aspect of hesitation to discuss the subject, that doesn’t stop the characters from being adults and talking about their sexual preferences and orientation. Especially important where two species are involved.
The ending ( and the bit with the villain) came about a tad too fast. I wished for more action and explanation to compete with all the grand exposition that went before. And time with the two groups together.
Ah well!
A Priest, A Plague, and A Prophecy by MD Grimm is a richly told, happily ended , well written fantasy story! One I’m absolutely recommending.
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Description:
Orcs are the answer but what is the question?”
Elias is a priest at the Temple of the Divine Sibyl. When he becomes lost in the woods after his brother’s hunting party abandons him, it’s just his luck that he’d stumble upon an angry orc caught in a trap. Unable to stomach the suffering of others, Elias throws self-preservation to the wind and frees the orc. Then Gurrkk—that’s a name?—ends up leading him to safety.
Gurrkk finds himself rather smitten by the sweet, awkward human. He’s always been fascinated with his people’s sworn enemy, and now he has a life debt to fulfill to maintain his honor.
Hiding an orc among the temple’s crypts wouldn’t have been Elias’s first choice but Gurrkk is stubborn about leaving. As they learn each other’s languages and spend more time together, Elias realizes they’ve become friends… and maybe more. And when the dying sibyl gives her last prophecy, Elias knows it wasn’t chance that brought them together, it was the gods.
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 