The year is 1339. The Catholic Church has just discovered a letter written by a man claiming to be the Apostle Paul. The letter is dismissed as heresy because it contains things about a group of people coming called the Gifted-who will have gifts like speaking in tongues, faith, wisdom, visions, prophecies, and healing. But the Catholic church cannot stop the Gifted by merely burning the priest who found it at the stake. The letter has escaped, the Gifted are coming...
Daria is a noble-woman who has just discovered that she has an uncanny gift of healing people. She cannot understand it but begins to use her gift on whoever she can. What she does not know is that there are others with gifts-and that there is one called the Sorcerer who wants to use them all for his own good.
The foundational ideas behind The Begotten and the research Lisa has done make this book twice as good as her other nonsense like The Bridge. But even though she has learned to be professional in her writing, she still cannot shake her knack for fixing everything at the end. The middle is the highlight of the book, when Daria discovers something interesting about her gift, but beyond this, there is nothing really new here.
The characters are interesting enough. Daria is an imperfect character, but the other characters are cut out of molds I wish people would stop using. The perfect male lead (a knight as well). The evil villain. The grandfatherly priest. There is really only one intriguing and different character besides Daria. Lisa needs to work on her characters desperately.
Besides the middle part where Daria finds a flaw in her gift, the remainder of the book is basically mediocre. The book ends with an inevitable showdown with the enemy that ends in a predictable way. There is nothing really exciting to say about this book. I've heard people say that this book is much better than Lisa's other books, but other than the professional front, there is really no difference in the end of The Begotten and the end of The Bridge. This just goes to show you that people can be easily blinded by a nice front.
Perhaps Lisa has original things in store for us in the next two books of this series.
2.5 stars
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