Dreamer’s Pool (Blackthorn and Grim #1)

Dreamer’s Pool (Blackthorn and Grim #1)

Juliet Marillier

In exchange for help escaping her long and wrongful imprisonment, embittered magical healer Blackthorn has vowed to set aside her bid for vengeance against the man who destroyed all that she once held dear. Followed by a former prison mate, a silent hulk of a man named Grim, she travels north to Dalriada. There she’ll live on the fringe of a mysterious forest, duty bound for seven years to assist anyone who asks for her help. Excerpt taken from book flap.

Language

H***- 3

S***- 6

A**-

B****- 1

F***-

D***- 1

Bas****- 13

Religious Cursing-

J****-

Chr***-

G**- 28

Derogatory terms etc-

Slut

Filthy whore

Filthy vermin

Rancid scum

Dimwit

Bonehead

Dotard

Filth

Scum

Crazed witch

Half-witted thug

Pox-ridden cur

Stinking mongrel

Half-wit

Ignorant loaf

Numbskull

Dolt

Alcohol, Drugs, Smoking

A son gives his mother some mead.

A wife gives her husband strong drink while his broken leg is mended.

A man drinks some ale and is drunk.

A basket of supplies contains mead.

A woman leaves bread and mead out for the fey each night.

A woman gives a jug of mead and bread to soldiers.

Two men are sharing mead.

Ale is served at breakfast.

Ale is served at a council.

Two people enjoy mead.

Mead is served in abundance at a party.

A man offers ale to a traveling party. One man drinks a few glasses.

Two people are gifted with a meal and ale.

A woman offers mead and food to a visitor.

Two people are served ale and cake.

Men sit at the end of their day and drink ale.

A man suggests they drink mead.

A man offers his guest some mead. He later pours some for a woman and waits for her to sip.

Soldiers are drinking a lot of ale getting drunk.

A wise woman brings mead to an elder.

Two men have ale with lunch.

A woman poured mead for two friends.

Two men have mead.

Mead is served at a council.

A man states he has a flask to share with a woman.

A small group plan on ale for the evening.

Intimacy, Sex, Immodesty

Some guards “had their way” with a young woman when she was first imprisoned.

A man rapes a married woman and she enlists another woman to help her get rid of the baby. Dozens of women have endured the same by that man.

A young woman has a man strip out of wet clothes then notices her small blanket doesn’t fully cover him.

A man’s “manly parts (are) in a state of arousal.”

A man is betrothed and frequently thinks how he’s not sure how he can wait to be with her.

A man’s betrothed sidles near and made his “manhood stand to attention.”

A woman kisses a man. He wraps his arms around her and they kiss for some time.

A woman comes into her fiancé’s chamber requesting sex but he turns her down. His manhood was “painfully evident.” She relents and kisses him then sits atop him. He protested, but surrendered.  Again the next night.

A fiancé grabs her betrothed and presses him against the wall, undoing his pants and grabbing him inside his pants.  It vaguely implies what they were doing; “get up before someone sees! How clever she was with her mouth.” She moved just in time for him to reassemble his clothes before someone walked by.

Later, a young man admits to another man that he saw them “up against a wall…at it like ferrets…she was on her knees, giving him a suck…”

Rape is implied when a man finds a girl shackled to the wall and guesses the man who took her unlocks the shackles at night. She was half-starved and couldn’t stand. When hearing her captors voice she wet herself.

A young woman’s virtue comes into question; whether she “has lain” with anyone or would. It is discussed in a public forum.

Soldiers are talking about women, trying to find one. One says, “Quickie up against the wall, that’s all I’m after, not a night in a girl’s bed.”

A woman accuses a man of forcing himself on her.

A woman asks a man about his intentions for marrying a young woman who’s been through a trauma. He says they’ll wed but they won’t do anything more (referring to sex) until she’s ready.

A man and woman softly kiss.

Violence, Weapons, Crime, Blood

If a cell door was opened,  a man would’ve attacked the guard and killed him with his bare hands. He thought about it many times.

A guard says a young woman will get a knife in the heart or a pair of thumbs in the throat.

A young woman gets mad and hits her head on the wall, slams her shoulder into prison bars, and rips out her hair.

A young woman prisoner debates on slitting her wrists to avoid execution. She tries a rusty nail but it’s too blunt, she debates sticking it in her eye, smashing head, hanging was too slow.

There is a crash and a prison ceiling caves in, hurting most but trapping some. Screams are heard. One man is under the rubble with a knife in his hand. Another is stuck under rubble and a man pulls him out while he screams. A man requests a knife, implying he will kill himself before someone else can. Instead, another man tied him to his back and they escape only to have the man die.

A man steals clothes off a clothes line.

A man is stuck underneath a wagon groaning in pain. He screams as they pull him out. They wrap his wounds and he screams again when they lift him on a stretcher.

A man remembers seeing his friends “butchered… left there like pieces of meat…” by guards.

A basket of supplies contains a knife.

A man remembers seeing another man under the rubble, crushed.

In prison, the prisoners were tortured, abused and beaten regularly.

A woman sticks a knife on her belt.

A woman is dead after a swim.

A woman gets bit by a dog, drawing blood.

A man requests a poison for a foe.

A woman tends to peoples ailments; some are stomach bugs, some are more serious such as a scythe wound.

Two people carry knives on a trip. They rescue a girl who has been imprisoned and her father murdered. They run into her captor and the man charges him and the the woman head butts his shoulder. The man who rescued her brought a rope and planned on killing the captor.

A house has been set on fire. Two people try to put it out. The man sees the man who set the fire and chases after him, wanting to wrench him in half, smash his head in, hold him under the water… He yells that he’s going to rip off his arms, then legs, then head and feed what’s left to the monster in the lake. He finds him, grabs his throat and yells that he’s going to peel his skin off inch by inch and bash his head into a tree making his brain into porridge. The man soils himself and turns purple as he shakes him.

A woman vividly remembers the fire her two relatives were in. A man had his men torch the house and the woman didn’t make it back in time. She could hear them inside, knew they were alive but the men had blocked the doors. The men laughed when their screams stopped.

A woman threatens that if the prince doesn’t do justice to a criminal that she will.

A woman knows she can throw a knife at a man and kill him.

Three ewes were mauled, possible by dogs or wild animals.

A man races across a room and starts to choke him.

A man yells that it’s a shame one man and a woman were not in the house he burned down.

After some rude comments a man grabs another man and squeezes his throat and thumps his head on the table until someone intervenes.

A woman thinks back on a time she was abused. Yelling at her, a hardened fist to her cheek, a blow to the other cheek, a threat to cut out her tongue, her face slammed to the floor, hit in ribs. She dreams of burning him alive, sticking her knife in his chest and twisting it.

A man throws a woman in a pond.

Potentially Intense Themes

A man who works at a mill is found crushed under it one day.

There is a story of a man and a pig going in a pond and both coming out in each other’s bodies. It is believed to have happened before.

A man grabs rocks to put in his pockets and kill himself.