A fresh choice for an eerie fantasy novel that parallels the moral choices we face.
Heartmender by V. Romas Burton is a fantasy novel with a unique premise and lofty moral overtones. Adelaide Tye lives in the land of Barracks where the human heart passes for currency. Most hearts are small and gray, but those rare hearts that are bright red and full of life can fetch quite the price. Extraction is a procedure where the heart is torn from the human so that they can trade it at the annual Heart Reign festival for any number of tempting offers. Riches? Beauty? Youth? Anything can be had for the price of your heart. But after losing her older brother in the Heart Reign festival several years earlier, Adelaide shuns the shallow offerings and vows to get her brother back, no matter the cost.
Fantasy abounds in this highly symbolic novel about the high cost of materialism and vanity. Really, all the ‘deadly sins’ are covered in this unusual story. Some aspects are very fairy-tale-like, such as the changes in town after the arrival of a nefarious vendor at the festival. “Before him, Barracks was a land of warmth and growth; now it was nothing but a frozen prison.” Other parts of the book, especially the Choices, are a mix of escape room excitement and haunted house scares. It was difficult to relate to the entire process of Extraction where citizens would carry their hearts in their pockets, eager to trade them away. But this book was not about how the festival came to be as much as the consequences of thoughtless choices. Heartmender is a fresh choice for an eerie fantasy novel that parallels the moral choices we face in our fast-paced modern lives.
