The Cursed Girl by Maria Vermisoglou | Book Reviews

It is not everyday when we come across a nice fantasy fiction. Recently we came across The Cursed Girl by Maria Vermisoglou. The EBook is provided by the author and fortunately I got the chance to read it from our team, and I am happy for the same. As always, the review is unbiased. The book takes us to a fantasy world of Witches but there is nothing too dark here. It is a genuinely written tale which explores on the earth and the canvas is gradually moves to the world of fantasy.

Reading this book reminded me of the following similar books:

• The Devil’s Gate : An Impossible Journey: 1 By Deepak Kripal
• The Fall of Pritu: Juggernaut | Vedic Sci-Fi Thriller
• The Mug Of Melancholy by Rohit Chakraborty

Let us take a look at the cover page of “The Cursed Girl”.

A young girl in the blue costume, standing at the bank of a Jungle from where the light blue sky and a castle (reflecting the architecture of Europe) are seen in the background, accompanied by a cat, is quite interesting. The font color for the title could have been a little different to make it stand out. The cover and the book both are fresh in terms of description (and appearance) of a witch, which is otherwise shown as draped in black output and often found cruel or ugly (in the looks). Also, there is no reference of brooms, which is good (otherwise, we are mostly represented with the fantasy world where witches – and even wizards – use broom to travel). The cover page is decent and reflects the theme of the book.

Let us take a bird’s eye view of the story.

Book Plot:

Eva, is a young girl, lives somewhere in a village situated at the outskirts of the capital of Spain. She lives with her mother Angela and a cat named Midnight! Ritta is her best friend. They all are having secrets (of course, known to each other). Angela is a witch and her powers are inherited by Eva. Witches are not bad creatures as often explored in books. According to this book, witches live in a hidden world, or disguise their appearance when live on the earth with the normal people. Their main duty is to save the Earth from the dark forces. Of course, the people living on the earth are not familiar with the fact or the efforts made by the witches, neither the witches expect that. On the contrary this fact needs to be remain hidden.

Eventually, Eva meets with the prince of the state Jonathan and his cousin Alexander who is more like a friend to the prince (or shall we say a friend who is more like a brother to him). Eva has a hatred for wealthy royals for many reasons and she doesn’t get along positively with Jonathan. Alexander a.k.a. Alec becomes her best friend! Eventually Eva came to know that Jonathan is really a nice and genuine human being and not like other royals.

The hidden (fantasy) area where the witches live and their kids are trained is known as White Land (amongst the witches, of course).

A war is irked and Jonathan, Alec and their forces had to take part in the same. Their army face huge loses and their soldiers need something which can heal them. Only, an exception doctor can do that, and those days, it is rare to find such doctor, especially based on the number of soldiers got wounded and killed daily, it seemed that only miraculous medicine can save them.

How Eva helps in the situation, how her equation with Jonathan, Alec, Angela, Ritta and others proceed further is explored in the rest of the story quite interestingly.

I like the freshness in the story and the path-breaking way it explored the witches. The characters are strong and they develops gradually. As the story is progress various layers of the personality of Eva are explored and they are interesting. Same we can say for Jonathan and Alec’s characters. These days we see almost a quarter of the world is crying about feminism and women empowerment. And, not all of them are getting the concept right. This book, never talks directly, but shows the empowered women via the characters and incidents. In fact, they are the saviors.

The landscapes, scenes and livelihood of the people is explored quite interestingly and authentically. The author seems to have taken a lot of references from World Wars. And, she might have read a lot of material in the same regards. Her love for the nature is visible almost throughout the book.

The way the author has reflected the way the power corrupt people is something worth reading. In fact, she’ve mentioned in the book:

Persons who have power only crave more. If you give them power, they will never let go.

Actually, the author, goes deep into her philosophy regarding power and its adverse effects of the human nature and persona. She also mentions that:

Can you protect me from the power that corrupts human nature?

And, at the very same time, Maria interestingly refers the famous dialog from the Spiderman (movies and comics) tale quite differently:

Great powers don’t have whys or hows; they do what they must.

But, the books in not about the negativity. The dark will of course exist till the light is, and vice versa. The book tells a story of hope and better future. One need to look for the ray of hope and then need to do hard work to achieve it. In fact the author mentions that:

Not all things are bad. Even if they look odd and strange, they might hide a treasure inside them.

So yes, the positive things can be found every. One needs to change the perspective to look at.

The author goes philosophical at places and gives us some lines like.

Being a coward was punishment enough.

The author is good at environment description and is able to create a scene which you can almost visualize. Her descriptions show her command over the language and vocabulary both, along with her literary skills. Take an example of the following lines from the book:

The flames on all the candles flickered and died as if all the oxygen had been pulled out of the room.

While I cannot mention all the scenes and dialogs I like in the book to avoid spoilers, I can summarize the theme of the book via the following line found in the book itself.

When all seemed lost, hope was the best thing you had.

The author could have been went ahead to add glossary to the book. The pace is almost good throughout the book apart from a few bumps. There is no adult content in the book nor brutality, despite of having various war references. And, I consider both these things as the positive attributes of the book.

Summary:

If you love fantasy fictions and like to explore fresh and imaginative writing, you will surely enjoy this book.

Definitely more than 7.5 stars out of 10

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• Buy Book From Amazon US – Paperback
• Buy Book From Amazon India – Kindle EBook
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