In turn-of-the-century Chicago, outspoken female scholars are hardly society's most valued members. Rosalind Hawkins is one such woman, steadfastly
refusing to subvert her innate intelligence and bend to the societal norm. But with the death of her father comes the harsh realization that the family
fortune, and with it the means to pursue her unladylike education, no longer exists. After the debtors finish with the estate, she is left with little
more than the clothes on her back, an unfinished doctorate... and a very peculiar job offer that seems tailor-made for her field of research. It would
mean moving out to the unknown West, abandoning all she has known to work for a total stranger, but what does she have to lose?
San Francisco rail baron Jason Cameron is also a Firemaster, a powerful magician. Disfigured by a spell gone terribly wrong, he reluctantly seeks help
from beyond his vast railway empire, run as much by magic as by his agents. His deformity left him unable to conduct the research required to determine
what went wrong in his spellcasting, let alone how to reverse it, and it isn't easy finding someone versed in the ancient languages his sources are
written in... especially when revealing any weakness to his fellow mages will almost certainly spell his doom. Bringing a headstrong lady scholar into
his home to unknowingly help him search for a cure is risky, but at this point it seems his only option.
Neither Rosalind nor Jason could have fully anticipated the effects of their meeting, and neither could guess the dangers that lay ahead for both of
them.
Review
This is a great version of the classic "Beauty and the Beast" story, filled with the intelligent characters that Lackey seems to like populating her
stories with. Her elemental magic system contains plenty of wonder and mystery, with powers and pitfalls that can trip up even an experienced master like
Cameron, and which can't help but fascinate a newcomer like Rosalind. Very imaginative, well-written, and always interesting, this is not a book to pick
up if you only have a few minutes to read - it will pull you in. Every time I pick it up just to glance at a page or two, I find myself rereading it,
though I can't explain why.
Oddly enough, while this is clearly a part of Lackey's growing Elemental Masters series, it doesn't seem to be officially acknowledged as such. Perhaps
it's because this book was published so much earlier than the rest. The subheading of "Fairy Tale" doesn't exclude it from the same universe, especially
as she uses fairy tale bases for the rest of her Elemental Masters books. Another mystery of authors and publishers, unfathomable to the lay reader, I
suppose...
Maya Witherspoon is a halfblood, English on her father's side and high-caste Indian on her mother's. Like her father, she has aspired to become a
doctor, a rare vocation for a woman of any culture in the turn-of-the-century British empire, but she has inherited more than just brains. Like her
mother, she has magic in her blood, but though she pleaded long and often, her mom refused to teach her to use it. Maya's magic was the magic of her
father's people, she would say. Though Maya learned what little she could from other sources and sheer instinct, she is far from trained in the
Art... and, now, it seems she will remain so. A dark force killed both of her parents, bearing the taint of a dark breed of Indian magic. Maya flees
to the distant city of London in her father's homeland, taking with her only her family's servants and her mother's peculiarly intelligent animal
friends. In this foreign place, where pure English women are little better than ornaments and half-blood foreigners are even less, Maya hopes to be
safe from the shadow... but the evil that hunts her knows no boundaries.
Review
This is set in the same world as Lackey's The Fire Rose, a world with Elemental Masters of Western magic and strange, unknown powers from
Eastern regions. It is also a fairy tale adaptation, this time a retelling of Snow White, with animals instead of dwarves. Personally, I liked the
characters and plotting of The Fire Rose better. Lackey wanders off on a few tangents about the deplorable state of women's rights (or utter
lack thereof) at the time in England and the brutal nature of late nineteenth century medicine, and the story therefore takes longer to jump into
action. When it does, it doesn't deviate too far from what one expects. That said, I enjoyed this book, but not as much as I should have. The
tangents nearly cost it another star in the ratings.
On a closing note, I have no idea why this isn't technically the same series as The Fire Rose; the switch in publishers may have something to do with
that, but it makes things a bit confusing, not to mention annoying for those of us trying to organize reviews.
Illya is the middle son of greedy Ivan, a self-styled tsar in long-ago Russia. All of Ivan's sons hate each other, considering them rivals to be the
as-yet-unnamed heir to Ivan's fortunes, but they share a special distrust of Illya. He is the only one of them with much in the way of brains, having
been taught by both Father Mikail and Ruslan the Shaman in a variety of subjects. He doesn't even want to be his father's heir, preferring his solitude,
his music, and his carvings, not to mention the fair maidens in his father's dairy, but his cruel brothers beat him bloody at every turn. All Illya really
wants is to get away, but with no horse and no means of support beyond his father's home, escape seems impossible.
One night, a mysterious visitor begins stealing cherries from Ivan's prized orchards. The tsar doesn't believe in Mikail's demons or Ruslan's spirits, but
something is making its way past the guards to steal every ripe cherry from the treetops without leaving a trace. As brother after brother tries to catch
the thief and fails, Illya's curiosity is roused. He sneaks into the cherry tree orchard at night and becomes the first and only man to spy the invader:
the legendary Firebird, immortal half-bird, half-tsarina. Illya knows Ivan will never believe him, but his silence changes nothing, for those who see the
Firebird find that their lives -and their luck - are forever changed.
Review
I wasn't quite as swept away by this book as I have been by some of Lackey's other works. It took a while to get the story moving, and even then there
was a strange restlessness to the plot, as if it kept wandering because it didn't know where to go next. That's not to say that it was poorly written.
Illya's mystical Russia is nicely detailed, as I've come to expect from Lackey's fairy tale retellings. I was just expecting more to happen sooner. The
blurb on the back cover gives away some of the plot twists, but at least it gave me something to look forward to when the story hit a lull, as it did more
than once. The Firebird herself is hardly in the story, and Illya is about the only character worth sympathizing with. All in all, it's not a bad tale, but I
can't in all honesty give it a higher rating because it could have - and should have - been so much more than it was.
Fierce, proud, and majestic, raptors have captured our imaginations for countless generations. We revere them as messengers of the gods... and, of
course, we can't help but imagine them into fantasty realms. This collection of fantasy stories about birds of prey, ranging from humorous to serious,
was compiled by noted fantasy author and raptor enthusiast Mercedes Lackey.
Review
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I must suck at picking anthologies. Maybe I just don't like many short stories. Or maybe I get sick of the
"name game": dropping names at the start of stories with some sort of context indicating that the authors are bestest buddies and/or longtime heroes of the
editor, with the underlying message being that the only reason the editor included the tales was because of who wrote them. Anyway, none of these were
terrible, but few linger long in the memory. If you like birds and fantasy, though, this is probably a great choice.
The Valdemar universe: The Mage Wars trilogy, Book 1 Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon DAW Fiction, Fantasy Themes: Classics, Epics, Gryphons, Wizards ***
Description
The peaceful lands of Urtho, Mage of Silence, are peaceful no more. The power-hungry warlord Ma'ar covets the land, and his armies of humans
and mutant makaar creep closer every day. With the old king dead and the Palace captured, Urtho himself reluctantly leads a tattered defense of
free humans and the other intelligent beings of the land, beings he himself created without ever intending them to face the brutalities of war.
Proudest among these are Urtho's sentien gryphons, and proudest among them is the brave and cocksure black gryphon Skandranon. The gryph's best
friend, the healer Amberdrake, worries that Skan's legendary luck may desert him, but Amberdrake has his own troubles to keep him busy, as he
sees to the needs of a physically and emotionally taxed camp of warriors and refugees. If Urtho's forces fail, every one of them - human and
gryphon - face the same dreadful fate at Ma'ar's sadistic hands.
Review
This was a very, very close call, but I just couldn't give it that fourth star. One of my problems with this book is that it's clearly part of a
larger series, and even though the Mage Wars trilogy predates the other volumes in the Valdemar timeline, Lackey and/or Dixon still seem to assume
that readers already know pertinent points about the world's magical rules and intelligent races. Of all the ones listed in various parts of the
story, in fact, readers only get to "see" details of the gryphons and the reptilian hertasi. The others remained indistict smudges in my mind's eye,
without so much as a size or a shape to attach to them... a rather glaring oversight, considering the depth of detail lavished upon the gryphons. If
anything, the authors go overboard on the gryphons, integrating knowledge gleaned from in-depth research on falconry and raptors. Nothing against
the gryphons, naturally, but I still found it irksome to be left out of such a potentially interesting part of the world. Lackey (and/or Dixon) also
spends too much time on banter and padding, relating conversations that go nowhere and characters that never amount to anything simply to avoid having
the minor subplot of world-shaking war advance significantly. I suppose it counts toward character development, but I would've rather had some manner
of plot development. As for Ma'ar, he's a generic villain straight from Fantasy Central Casting: Ma'ar has no real personality or motives beyond the
obvious (megalomaniacal sadist), his armies consist of masses of identically-uniformed brutes, and his makaar spend most of the book as yet more
undescribed monstrosities. Likewise, Urtho seemed another cardboard-cutout Light Mage. But, then, they weren't the only characters who failed to come
across as startlingly original creations, and the final breakdown of Good and Evil comes across pretty much as you'd expect it would from the get-go.
This edition includes finely detailed ink illustrations of several characters, though I noticed several inconsistencies between the characters and the
book descriptions. (I do have to give the illustrations credit for finally giving me a look at the hertasi and the makaar.) The images, alas, are far
too detailed to survive downsizing to paperback format as anything much more than dark masses. On the plus side, I'm a bit of a sucker for gryphons,
and the Valdemar gryphs pretty much set the standard for future incarnations of the noble beings. Of all the characters in the book, the gryphs come
across as the most likeable, most distinct, and generally most intelligent of the lot. So, on the whole, I can't say I hated The Black Gryphon,
but reading it felt like more of a chore than it should have. I might try the next book in the trilogy, but only if I find it cheap.
Elves aren't just a fairy-tale invention. They're real, and through magical disguise they still walk among us in modern times. Some humans are
privileged enough to gain their confidence... while some end up entangled in their affairs whether they want to be or not. Eric Banyon is such a
man, a down-on-his-luck musician gifted with rare bardic magic who finds himself called upon to help save the elves of Los Angeles, and later
San Francisco.
This was originally published as two books: The Knight of Ghosts and Shadows - Eric Banyon is a phenomenally talented musician, once praised as a prodigy and a prized student
at Julliard. Now he's a drifter, playing at Renaissance Faires and on street corners for cash, with a string of broken relationships and empty
bottles behind him. After his latest breakup, in a drunken stupor among a stand of ancient oaks, he inadvertently pipes a tune that awakens Korendil,
an elven warrior long ago imprisoned in the trees by an elven rival. The elf immediately takes to Eric, insisting that he has the rare gift of Bardic
magic and imploring him to help save his fading species, threatened by the destruction of the oak trees, which contain a magical nexus that is a key
to their magic. Without it, the elves of Los Angeles will die, and they are too long gone in the disconnected state of Dreaming to recognize the
danger to their lives. Those not lost in the Dreaming willfully seek oblivion in the face of almost certain doom while guzzling the elven intoxicant
caffeine. The only other elf not lost in Dreaming or denial is the powerful Perenor, the very elf who is engineering the destruction of the nexus and
who originally trapped Korendil in the grove. Korendil cannot fight Perenor alone, but Eric the Bard is too caught up in his own misery to believe the
danger. Eric has been hiding from reality at the bottom of a bottle long enough; it is time to wake up and accept some responsibility, before the
elven population perishes. Summoned to Tourney - Eric and his friends have relocated to San Francisco after the fireworks in Los Angeles. Here, still in the company
of local elves and the fringe-psychic community, Eric grows accustomed to his Bardic powers. When a government team starts abducting his gifted friends,
he fearlessly steps in, unwittingly releasing a great danger on the city in his attempts to rescue the imprisoned psychics and elves. The Nightflyers,
shadow-beings from another realm, seem to respond to his commands, but there is more in the labs than Eric realizes. The dark figures have long yearned to
be free to feed on the misery and suffering of those in this world, and Eric's summoning just may give them that chance. Can Eric stop the danger he brought
to the world from turning California into an empty wasteland of rubble and death?
Review
In a way, I wish I had read this when it was two books. That way, I could give the first one the fair rating of Bad and the second one a Good. After
reading the first book, however, I would never have bothered with the second if it hadn't been packed between the same covers like it was here. I don't
think Lackey had anything to do with the initial story of Eric and the elves, other than the rough outline (perhaps), and Guon just isn't up to carrying a
tale of this nature on her own. It wanders around, with characters acting impossibly stupid and scenes drug out far beyond the point of exhaustion. It's a
pet peeve of mine when authors have characters act piggishly stubborn in refusing to accept something just to add page count. It's an urban fantasy. I
knew there would be elves and magic when I bought it. The extent to which Eric simply refuses to accept it - and the impossibly convoluted twists of logic
the authors cram into his head to make him so dumb - gets very old very fast, and even when he does accept some of the truth, he is so dumb about other
aspects that it was incredibly hard to swallow. The story wallows in scenes for unnecessarily long times, presenting the same scant few ideas and notions
many times from multiple characters' views before finally allowing the story to advance an inch or two, only to wallow around again. The ending was oddly
anticlimactic for all that was supposedly at stake. Things seemed to be happening, but I didn't feel any particular sense of tension or urgency.
The second part/book, on the other hand, moves much faster, and actually convinced me to care about the main characters and what they were going through. More
of Lackey's hand was evident here than the first volume, or at least her writing partner showed more talent. There is at least one more book in the series,
but I'm wary of Lackey's wavering quality of late. (Truth be told, I'm not entirely sure how much of Lackey's books are her and how much are her co-authors; her
quality varies so much that I'm tempted to say the lion's share of "her" books aren't hers at all, but the oft-changing other writers' efforts. Maybe she's just
a name to sell books these days, and even her share is done by a ghostwriter. But I digress...)
The near-immortal elven lords rule over enslaved humans and the weaker of their own race with cruelty and massive magical abilities. Despite their
iron-fisted control, one message of defiance, in the form of a prophecy, is still whispered in the deepest corners of the slave barracks. It tells of
the Elvenbane, a half-elven wizard, who will lead humans and halfbreeds alike in a great rebellion. The elves fear the powers of the halfbloods and the
prophecy, groundless though it seems, so all half-elven children and their human parents are put to death immediately upon discovery. Inevitably, some
manage to escape detection, joining bands of free humans hiding in the countryside or living under magical disguise among the very elves who hate them.
Unfortunately, none so far has proven themselves anything close to the dreaded Elvenbane.
A human mother of a halfbreed, formerly the favorite concubine of the powerful Lord Dyran, escapes into the desert, but dies shortly after childbirth.
The baby girl is found by Alara, a dragon shaman, and taken back to her Lair... much to the fury of her fellow dragons, who have carefully hidden all
trace of their existence on this world. Though the dragons often appear in human or elven form to meddle in the affairs of the "two-leggers," they do so
for personal amusement only, with little thoughts of the consequences to those they deceive. But times are changing for all races, and the child Leshara
has a destiny to fulfill as the Elvenbane - if she can only keep from being killed by rival dragons... or dying in the desert... or from being betrayed
by the halfblood wizards in exile, who have grown accustomed to Their Way of Doing Things, a way which bears a marked similarity to the elf-lords'
lifestyle.
Review
This one reads fairly fast, without lingering too long on any one scene or predicament. The characters have both integrity and brains, and act as you
think they would act. Not that it was predictable in the least, but Shara always acted as Shara, her spiteful dragon-sister Myre was always Myre, and so
forth. Some authors give us intelligent characters who are set up to follow a particular false path just to the writer can jerk them around at a climatic
point. The people (including, of course, dragons, halfbloods, and elves) in this book manage to figure things out on their own pretty well, and get on with
deciding what to do with that information instead of hemming and hawing forever. All of the characters, good and evil, are capable and competent, without the
standard plot-extending stupidity. I really liked the dragons, especially Keman, Shara's foster brother. Fear of change is at least as great of an enemy here
as Lord Dyran and the elven High Lords, and that fear is embodied in members of every race. This is a great fantasy story, setting up what looks to be a great
series.
Shara and the halfblood wizards, along with some freed human magicians, have lived through the second Wizard War and won the right to live in peace in
the uncharted regions beyond the elven lands. No sooner do they and the rebel dragons construct a new Citadel than old grudges resurface. Many of the senior
wizards resent having to give up their lives of relative luxury for a network of caves in the middle of nowhere, and place the blame for their less-than-grand
new lifestyle squarely on Shara's shoulders. After all, they reason, it was because of the Elvenbane that they were chased out of their old home. Seeking new
trading allies, Shara, her dragon-brother Keman, the halfblood Mero, and the eldest of dragons, Kala, leave the new Citadel and stumble across the Iron People.
Ages ago, when the elves first invaded this world, the human Iron People escaped into the wilderness. Today, though they are less than legends in modern elven
society, they're still quite real. Living a nomadic life, protected by magic-blocking iron, they still harbor great resentment towards the invading elves. Can
Shara convince the Iron People that she and her companions are not the same "green-eyed demons" who rule in the north, before the fearful elves break their own
treaty and come after the infighting wizards?
Review
I docked this one a star for pulling a "Whoops, Guess You'll Have To Read A Sequel, Sucker!" ending. Few things tick me off like writers (or is it
publishers?) who don't tell you that a book is part of a series, or how long that series is likely to be. At the very least, I'd think they'd know if it was
supposed to be a trilogy. The first Halfblood Chronicles book left things open for a second book, but wrapped up enough that I felt that I'd read a complete
story. This one left a few too many loose ends for my liking. I sure hope there's a third book in the works, or I'll be one hacked-off reader! Other than that,
it's every bit as good as the first story. Once again, fear of changing the status quo, and the greedy nature of certain individuals in power, figure in as the
real enemies.
(The third and final book in the trilogy is finally available, but I haven't found time to get to it yet. Given Lackey's deteriorating writing quality, I admit I'm
hesitant to pick it up; I so enjoyed the first two that I'd hate to spoil them with a substandard conclusion.)
