The Phoenix Endangered by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

Tiercel Rolfort and Harrier Gillain are two teenagers from Armathalieh, living a thousand years after Idalia and Kellen. But Idalia and Kallen are still remembered throughout the land as "The Great Wildmage Idalia", and "Kellen the Poor Orphan Boy". When Tiercel began having visions of a woman in a lake of fire, and the local wildmages couldn't tell him why he was having such problems, he and Harrier went to find a stronger wildmage who could help him.

Eventually, his search led him to the Elves, and to Jermayan, the last living elf mage. Jermayan had married Idalia, reborn as an elf, and was now dying. With him would die his dragon, Ancaladar the Black. But Jermayan transferred his bond to Tiercel, and Tiercel discovered he was fated to be a High Mage. His friend Harrier shared his propensity for magic, but was fated to be a Knight Mage of the Wild Magic. He recieved his copies of the three books every wild mage has, and the companionship of a unicorn named Kareta.

The elves point the two mages south, where a Wild Mage named Bisochim has gone to the dark, and seeks to bring back the Endarkened to restore True Balance to the land. As a member of the desert tribes, he gathers the tribes to him, trying to save them from being used by the light as tools against him, but the leader of one of the tribes, Shaiara of the Nalzindar, realizes that something about Bisochim is wrong, and instead leads her tribe into the hottest, driest part of the desert, to a city called Abi'Abadshar, where she hopes to shelter with her tribe until the trouble caused by Bisochim is gone.

Meanwhile, Harrier has been resisting reading the books of the Wild Magic, and Kareta keeps pushing him and pushing him to read them. When he finally does begin to read them, it doesn't seem to him like magic is anything he will ever need or want to do, but when they finally break away from the Elven lands and continue to head south, they discover a man half-dead, who can only be saved by Harrier's Healing Magic.

The price is hard, knocking him out for close to two days, but the man recovers, and Harrier receives his own instruction from the Wild Magic, to become an apprentice. The man he saved is a Telchi warrior, outcaste from his people for breaking a given oath to a man who did not deserve his oath in the first place. He has long been searching for an apprentice, and Harrier feels the hand of fate lying heavy on him when he finds that out.

Surrendering to the price the magic asks of him, he becomes the Telchi's student, and returns with him to Tarnatha'Iteru, one of the great Iteru, or Well, cities in the Marinda Desert. But when the city hears of other cities attacked and destroyed by the Desert Tribes allied with Bisochim, only the two of them stand between the Tribes and the Destruction of Tarnatha'Iteru. But can they hold the city against that many tribesmen with only a single high mage and Knight-Mage? Or will the city fall against the hordes of determined tribesmen?

Bisochim, too, is troubled by doubts. When he took the tribesmen with him to the comfortable oasis he made in the hottest, most inhospitable part of the desert, he didn't expect them to come close to killing each other when their tempers were incited by the close quarters and enforced company. And when he sent them out to look for the Nalzindar, he didn't expect the young men and women to destroy the Iteru-cities. But he has his own reasons for his actions, involving the woman he loves, Saravasse, who has ceased to love him since he accidentally killed her and brought her back to life. But can he win if she only laughs at the things that cause him pain, and refuses to speak to him the rest of the time?

This was an interesting novel, and one that I enjoyed. And yet, I didn't find it quite as compelling as the original "Obsidian" series, possibly because here, the spotlight is shared between two main characters, both of whom are equally important to the story, but who are both floundering under their new responsibilities. In short, despite the fact that they are on opposite sides of the magical aisle, in character, they are remarkably similar, and for a while, at the beginning of the book, I was finding it hard to get into, especially with the seemingly unrelated story of the Nalzindar tribe.

Soon, however, the story picked up, and once they left the Elven lands and found the desert, I felt the story got much, much better. Unfortunately for the story, I didn't find the desert tribes as interesting as I did the elves in the former series, and I got a strange feeling of Deja Vu, as if I had read parts of this, or the presented themes, before. And it did remind me of the second book in the Obsidian series, where we meet a woman who will be thematically important in the third book. Here, Shaiara fills that role. I'll have to keep reading to see if my suspicions are borne out, though.

So, yes, this was an enjoyable novel, but parts of it were more of a slog than a joy to read. I do recommend it, but not as highly as some of Mercedes Lackey's other series. I suppose I'll just have to read the next book to see if I truly end up enjoying this series.