A satisfyingly action-packed and bittersweet follow-up which promises more to come.
The second volume of a political fantasy series (The Tethered Mage, 2017) in which the noble, scholarly heroine hails from a magic-wielding city reminiscent of Venice.
The Witch Lords of Vaskandar appear ready to make war on the Serene Empire of Raverra. Many powerful Falcons—the mages conscripted to serve the Empire—and the Falconers responsible for controlling their magic are disappearing. Lady Amalia Cornaro seeks both the missing Falcons and a political solution to the impending conflict. Set against her are a newly discovered nemesis, the Witch Lord called the Lady of Thorns, who has a vendetta against Amalia’s family; and the amoral Vaskandran Skinwitch Prince Ruven, who plans to use the volcano Mount Whitecrown as a weapon of conquest. Her allies include her reluctant Falcon, the fire warlock Zaira; the Falconer captain Marcello, the politically unsuitable man Amalia loves; and Amalia’s new suitor, the mercurial Witch Lord Kathe of Let, an attractive but decidedly unreliable man with several agendas. Amalia’s path to maturity continues in this installment, her romantic and political turmoil deepening. The choices she regretfully makes for political expediency wound her conscience, but she still makes them. It will be interesting to see just how far she’ll be willing to go in service of the Serene Empire and whether she’ll come to openly enjoy her political position. It’s certain that she’s getting closer to a moral and ethical crossroads; one hopes that the author will continue not to flinch at that point. And while physical and magical strength play a definite role in carrying the story forward, Amalia triumphs through her wits, savvy, and book learning—an inspiration for geeks everywhere.
A satisfyingly action-packed and bittersweet follow-up which promises more to come.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-46690-5
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A veteran fantasy writer's (Freeze Frames, 1995, etc.) anthology of 32 contemporary, original, mostly American stories. Greek myth is well-represented, with tales such as Susan Shwartz's feminist ``Hunters,'' about Artemis' tragic love affair with a mortal, and Esther M. Friesner's amusing if overlong ``Tea,'' about a lustful male aerobics instructor on a cruise ship who finds himself in the middle of a parlor squabble between Circe, Medea, and Prospero. Many efforts here draw upon reserves of deep sorrow: M. John Harrison's ``Seven Guesses of the Heart,'' for example, concerns the inability of magic to comfort a grieving father, and Gregory Feeley's ``The Drowning Cell'' is a sad story about a girl connecting with a boy who, centuries ago, drowned in a debtors' prison. Alternatively, the boy may be only an imaginary playmate, but, in any case, experiencing his sadness enables the girl to free herself of her own troubles. ``I just can't believe in a world where everything is run by science,'' says the main character in Connie Hirsch's amusing romp, ``Wicked Cool,'' which might be a manifesto for fantasy writers; most of these pieces feature some sort of ``magick''—in Hirsch's case, not always the magick of the Old Religion, since her witches fly around contemporary Boston on broomsticks. Mark Kreighbaum's overtitled ``Looking in the Heart of Light, the Silence,'' however, convincingly evokes the allure of the black arts: Two practitioners play out a foreordained scenario on a gloomy winter night in Minneapolis, intoning a series of powerful spells. Magick becomes bittersweet in Karawynn Long's clever commentary on the abortion debate, ``Riddle in Nine Syllables,'' in which a high-school girl invokes a medieval spell to induce a miscarriage in her friend, only to find herself carrying the fetus. Not flawless, but nearly so.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-105342-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1996
Second volume of the Watershed trilogy (A Breach in the Watershed, 1995), set in a world divided by lofty mountains into three provinces: mundane Dalethica; Faerine, realm of the good- magic Aura; and Duloth-Trol, source of the evil-magic Darkblood. Duloth-Trol's ruler, the bad god Dassedec, continues his attempts to conquer the world. Once more he's opposed by mountaineer Rudy Appenfell, who has drunk water derived from all three provinces simultaneously and has become the Man of Three Waters, a magical warrior with the power to unite all those who oppose Dassedec. Again, bristly and energetic, and commendably self-contained, but with neither the craft nor the originality to stand out in a cluttered and overblown field.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-441-00333-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1996
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