“The Right of the First Night” is a novel by Yulia Arkharova, opening the duology “Defying Fate.” The book blends action, heroic, romantic, and love fantasy with an adventure-spanning scale.
At first glance, everything seems perfectly clear: a young orphaned herbalist is forcibly passed off as the son of the village elder. By custom, the first night after the wedding is to be spent with the local lord, but the landowner unexpectedly grants this right to a visiting nobleman from the capital Empire.
Only that the key characters turn out not to be who they appear to be. The province stands on the brink of rebellion, a conspiracy is ripening in the capital, and an ancient cult of magic raises its head once again… And events that begin as a private drama have the power to shake the entire continent.