THE ASCENDITURE

A young woman’s passion for mountain climbing threatens a brutal patriarchy founded on dark secrets in Dabney’s YA fantasy novel.

In the kingdom of Ectair, 17-year-old Klarke lives in a city where “mud and animal dung are as common…as boils and poverty.” She feels free only when climbing, “pressed against granite. Dangling from a thin rope, with no guarantees.” Her supportive instructor is the leader of the Ascenditures, elite climbers who maintain dams and bridges and risk their lives scaling a mountain to gather food and medicinal plants for the king. Klarke, the only woman trainee and the best climber, has competed twice for a chance to join the Ascenditures. The target of male derision and dislike, she outclimbs her competitors (while encumbered by the long skirt all women must wear), yet each time, the king’s judges grant victory to the male runner-up. Klarke’s determined to realize her dream: that is, if she can survive treachery, dark forces, and a king whose hatred is personal. Set in a kingdom where death can be the penalty for women who protest the male-dominated social order, this series launch is a well realized, unusually muscular, female-centered fantasy. There’s an old Bavaria-like flavor in the sure-handed worldbuilding here, which features horse-drawn carriages and cobbled streets, ships powered by sails, priestlike “päters,”and “holzenschreins” (shrines) to Ectair’s two gods. The kingdom’s history and underlying mythologies are woven into the plot with suspenseful intimations of not-yet-dead dark magic. Klarke’s deep love for climbing is authentically realized in the author’s informed portrayal of limb-shaking exhaustion, climbing injuries and deaths, and the search for foot- and fingerholds at seemingly unscalable heights. Can Klarke trust a seeming royal ally and her own heart? How did her mother and the queen really die? And can she truly free the subjugated women of the kingdom? Readers must wait for the next installment to follow Klarke’s search for the answers.

A powerful female protagonist fights for equality in a vivid, multifaceted fantasy world.