Cast in Fury by Michelle Sagara

Kaylin Neya is a Corporal of the Hawks, one of the three branches of guardsmen who patrol Elantra, the city of the Dragon Emperor. Kaylin was born in the fiefs, the parts of the city barely controlled by the fief Lords, who usually spend more time running crime than looking out after those in the fiefs. But she and her friend Severn got out. Kaylin by being adopted by Marrin a Leonine woman who raises many of the city's foundlings and orphans. And when she became old enough, she became a city guard.

Kaylin is human, but different. When she was 12, magical sigils appeared on her skin, for no reason that she could determine. She has magical power, but she doesn't want to do magic. The best she can do is heal, which is rare, but she uses her power as a midwife, saving children and mothers from death. Recently, however, the dragons ruling the city have realized the power she holds, and put her under the tutelage of one of their own: Lord Sanabalis, Head of the Guild of Mages. Despite being able to heal, she has a hard time using her power for even the simplest of other tasks. Partly because she is unused to using her power that way, and partly because she really doesn't want to do anything but heal. To keep her power contained, however, she must wear a special bracelet that limits the power she can access.

In the past few months, Kaylin has fought off a rogue Dragon, rescued a Tha'alanni child, been to court, and been sucked into a part of the city that predates Elantra, which recognized her somehow. She also witnessed the Tha'alani, who are used in the city as mind-readers by the court and the Emperor, and hated and feared as a result, try to stop a tidal wave that could have destroyed the entire city. In doing so, she lost her fear of them, but that isn't true for the rest of the city.

In fact, the sight of so many Tha'alani before the tidal wave has made people think that the Tha'alani tried to destroy the city, and people are keeping watch over the enclave where the Tha'alani live with weapons, ready to destroy what they hate and fear.

The Emperor has realized this, and comissioned the Imperial Playwright, Richard Rennick, to write a play that will mitigate the hate and fear the Tha'alani are experiencing, and hopefully cause the humans around them to understand them better. He did so, but the Tha'alani found the play distasteful, considering it to be a lie. So now Kaylin and her Partner Severn have been seconded to the Imperial Palace and Rennick in hopes of him writing a play that will have the same effect, but which will not infuriate the people the Emperor is hoping to save.

At the same time, though, trouble hits the Halls of the Law where Kaylin serves. Her superior, a Leontine named Marcus, is charged with killing another Leontine and replaced by Mallory, a Hawk with a stick up his butt who wants to make the Hawks run smoothly. But he does so by enforcing regulations and informs Kaylin that if she doesn't follow regulations, she will be kicked out of the force. But Kaylin cares less about that than in saving Marcus. She travels to the part of the city where he lives, and talks to his first wife and Matriarch of the Pridlea where he lives. She also talks with his other wives, and discovers that one of them has a sister who Kaylin midwifed through her first birth.

But there is a problem there. Marcus's wife, Sarabe, has a difficulty in her background because of the color of her fur. She and her sister should have been killed at birth, but escaped that because their parents loved them. But when they were older, their parents died, and now they had nowhere to turn for shelter. Marcus took in Sarabe, but her sister Marai, made her own choice. Marcus eventually took Sarabe to wife, and when Marai became pregnant, she contacted the Pridlea, and Marcus gave her Kaylin's name as a midwife for her child. When the baby was born, Kaylin was there and became a sort of mother to the child by licking the birthing fluids from its eyelids. Under Leontine Law, doing so makes her a mother to the child.

But because the Baby was male, by Leontine Law, he will have to be slain. And therein lies the problem. The Leontines don't want to tell Kaylin why the color of the baby's fur makes it subject to death under Leontine Law. Sarabe has children, but hers are all female, which, apparently makes her safe somehow. Kaylin asks about Marcus's mood, hoping to prove him innocent of the murder of which he is accused, but they know nothing. She and Severn go to see Marcus and get to speak to him, but he is closemouthed about the fight that led to the murder, although he does say that he is guilty, which devastates Kaylin. She cannot believe the man she knows is guilty of cold-blooded murder. Or even murder in a fight.

They spend the day with Rennick in the Tha'alani compound, where Kaylin heals four Tha'alani who were attacked by the townsfolk out of fear and hatred, and that night, Kaylin and Severn visit Sarabe's sister, Marai. When they do, though, they are attacked by a night-black lioness and nearly killed by Leontine Mage. Since Leontines are very proud about the fact that they don't have mages, Kaylin wonders about this. The fire the mage blasted them with burns down the building, but Kaylin and Severn save each other and help Marai save her son. But it soon becomes clear that Malin was the animal who attacked them, and she is close-mouthed about why, although she maintains it was to save her son. They bring Malin to Marcus' Pridlea, where the other Leontines take her in, even her son.

The next day, Kaylin asks Lord Sanabalis to help them investigate the possible mage, and he agrees, and they travel to the Leontine part of the city, where he speaks to all the Leontine around in a strange tongue that Kaylin almost understands and finds herself disobeying his orders and climbing out of the carriage to be near him and hear this language. After a long time, he is done, and says he was telling the Leontine how they were created, and that they needed to hear it.

Caught between the two tasks: helping save the Tha'alani and saving Marcus and Marai and Marai's son, Kaylin can hardly rest, and when it turns out that the Outcaste Dragon who she fought before may have had a hand in Marcus' problems, she can't stop until she has saved the innocent and punished the guilty. But does she have enough magic in her to rewrite history and make a better situation for Marai's child, and can she save him if the Dragon Emperor decides to get involved?

I found this book fascinating, and trying to summarize it was hard, especially with all the information that was uncovered and everything that went on in the book. So much happens and so many secrets are revealed that a shocking turn of events seems to occur with every chapter.

But while we begin to understand more about the races of Elantra, Kaylin seems to become more of a mystery with each book. Her powers, such as they are seem to respond to the situations she gets herself in, and yet, once the situation is over, they mostly go away. In this volume, she speaks in fluent Elder Tongue at one point, but after the crisis is past, she needs help to speak it and understand what she is speaking. And the tattoos on her body have something to do with it... because after she spoke long in the tongue, her tattoos glowed blue and were hot to the touch. And when they stopped glowing and cooled, she was back to being unable to understand much of it.

In a way, it is interesting and frustrating to have a heroine whose past and abilities are such a mystery. Interesting, because it keeps you reading, and frustrating because the information about her and her abilities is doled out in veritable crumbs and you occasionally want something substantial to sink your teeth into.

While this book isn't about Kaylin so much, it gives far more information on the Leontines and their background as a race, and also a great deal of information about their culture. Each book in the series, except for maybe the first, has delved into one of the races that live in Elantra. With a great number of races calling Elantra home, this promises many more books to come and more things to learn about Kaylin Neya. Because each race is covered in detail, they come across as complete and interesting rather than just "races shown in the Cantina sequence". Each race feels as though they are real and have life in more than just a series of books.

It's this kind of reality that draws me to this series, the sense that Elantra is an actual city somewhere keeps me coming back and deeply enjoying what I read. I've recommended this series before, and I will continue to recommend it. It's just too good not to.

Pet Peeve by Piers Anthony

Goody Goblin is a most un-goblinlike goblin. He's clean, he's neat, he's polite, and he's gentlemanly. Which makes him very much like a female goblin, but the female goblins prefer more goblinesque goblins, making Goody a very lonely goblin. He did find a female Goblin to love, but she was cursed to have a very short life, so while they fell in love and had children together, both children had very normal goblin outlooks on life. Thus, Goody is alone once again.

But now a stranger has given him the finger, making him angry. But when he realizes that there is no way to be rid of it, except by giving it to another, he decides to go to see the Great Magician, and pay for his answer by giving a year of service. This isn't the first time he's gone this route... the last time he went was to find out how to attract a goblin female when he wasn't very goblin-like, but the advice didn't help very much.

On the way to the castle, Goody must overcome three challenges, and finds them fairly easy. He is met by one of the Magician's wives and they hear his tale of woe. Rose of Roogna offers one of her roses, and he picks a gray one, the rose of grief, since he is still grieving for Go-Go Goblin, his deceased wife. She tells him that when he meets a woman who can take the rose without harm, he will have found another woman to love. He isn't sure he wants this, but decides he must.

Then he is escorted to the Good Magician Humphrey, who tells Goody to give the finger to Humphrey's Daughter-in-Law, Wira, who is blind and therefore cannot be affected by it. He does, but instead of serving for a year, the Good Magician tells him he must find a most disagreeable animal a home: the Pet Peeve, a bird who makes enemies wherever he goes by saying the nastiest things he can think of in the voices of those around him, causing quarrels and trouble wherever he goes. Humphey is asking Goody because of his temperament: No one else on Xanth can be around the bird for very long without wanting to kill it. But because Goody is so inoffensive, he must have a bodyguard. Enter Hannah Barbarian, who will protect him and the bird from any external threat. But they must find the Peeve a good home where he will be happy, a tall order.

Goody and Hannah set off to find the Peeve a home, but have no luck getting rid of him in the Region of Madness, which is where they assume anyone who would want such a bird would live. Along the way, they encounter two dragons who trade them information for a robot builder from one of Princess Iris's moons, the Moon of Robots. They agree, and travel there, where they trade information about their past lives to the robots in exchange for the plans for a robot builder.

When they return home, they help the dragons put together the items they will need to make the robot builder. It's tiny, but it works, and they each leave, happy and satisfied. But the machine is still working as they leave, and when they reach Castle Zombie, they realize that the robots are constructing more robots and are overrunning the land in the search of building materials to make more of themselves.

To stop the holocaust they have unwittingly created, they must inform King Trent and become diplomats to the other races to bring them together to stop the robots before they overrun the whole of Xanth and push out all the other plants, creatures, humans and animals. In doing so, Goody meets his perfect match, Gwenny Gobliness, raised by Elves and Centaurs to want respect and kindness from her mate. And she can only be married to a chief or son of a Chief, as she herself is a Chieftess of her clan. Can Gwenny and Goody overcome the barriers keeping them apart even as they struggle against the army of robots overrunning the land of Xanth?

I liked this book, which, while focussing a great deal on love and sex (as many of Piers Anthony's books do), doesn't have that whole distasteful "underage sex and romance" story underpinning it, like "Two to the Fifth" did. Goody Goblin is a good guy who might be looking for love, but not too hard, because he's still in mourning for his old wife.

The love story, such as it is, starts late, as if it was more of an afterthought than anything else. Even Hannah Barbarian gets a love story, such as it is, with a robot reprogrammed to have a conscience. But the best thing about this particular love story is that it's sweet without being randy, although it certainly does get into that later on. It's basically very much like the early Xanth books, in all the best ways.

This being a Xanth Book, of course, puns abound, and those not into puns, or those who run screaming from puns had best beware, as this book is full of them. Now, I tend to be a punslinger in real life, but some of these puns even made me wince. So, be warned, but those who enjoy puns, invertebrate punsters and incorrigable punsters, will find plenty to enjoy here. And being an invertebrate punster myself (spinelessly unable to resist making a pun, so slug me!), of course, I enjoyed it.

Blood Ties by Tanya Huff

The Blood Books center around three characters- Victory or Vicki Nelson, ex-cop turned PI whose eyes are slowly going bad from retinitis pigmentosa, Mike Celluci, her former partner and former lover, still a cop, who can't give up loving Vicki no matter how hard he tries and Henry Fitzroy, a romance novelist who just happens to be a vampire, and the illegitimate son of Henry VIII.

In the first book, Vicki met Henry when she was on the trail of a diabolist, a man who was summoning demons. But he wasn't the real problem. It was the extremely powerful demon who his summoned demons were attempting to bring to the human world that was the problem. Vicki found herself attracted to Henry and became his lover, something Mike resented, but she found that letting Henry drink from her drew out the process of her disease, and made her keep her sight just a little longer.

In the end, after a number of adventures together, Vicki was dying, and Henry saved her by turning her into a vampire like him. But two vampires cannot remain in one city together, they are simply too territorial: the older and stronger will kill the weaker, or the weaker will flee. But in one final case together, they found out that occasionally, the lust to kill can be converted into a different kind of lust entirely, and managed to survive working together in the same city. Henry moved to Vancouver, and Vicki stayed in Toronto.

This book is a collection of short stories written by Tanya Huff involving all three characters. The first, "This Town Ain't Big Enough" shows how Vicki, a newly made vampire and definite low woman on the totem pole, defends her place in town when an older and stronger female vampire decides to move in and take over.

"What Manner of Man?" Has Henry helping a man in the British Government discover a French spy working among the nobles of the ton to gather secrets during the Napoleonic War.

"The Cards Also Say" has Vicki working with the Rom, or Gypsies, to capture a man who is stalking her, and presents a danger to both her and the Gypsies.

"The Vengeful Spirit of Lake Neapeakea" involves Vicki protecting a truly repellent real estate agent from a supposed monster living in Lake Neapeakea. While Vicki assumes that the people living around the lake are more to blame than some supposed monster living beneath it, the man she is supposed to protect has an absolute genius for pissing off everyone around him... and doesn't seem to care.

"Someone to Share the Night" involves Henry's search for a girlfriend, and what happens when he suspects that one of the women who answered his ad is not as innocent as she painted herself to be.

"Another Fine Nest" has Vicki going after giant cockroaches living in the subway stations under Toronto.

"Scleratus" shows us how Henry dealt with the men and the Inquisition who killed the woman he truly loved, Ginevra Treschi, and also, how he was turned aside from an eternity of nothing but vengeance by having to clean up a situation he had helped create.

"Critical Analysis" shows Vicki's case involving an author who has been targeted by someone for death... but nobody seems to have done anything to the author but himself. Could be somehow be hurting himself and not knowing about it?

"So This is Christmas" is the story of "A Christmas Carol", with Vicki as the Scrooge Character, having a dream on Christmas Day (because she sleeps during the day).

The Final two chapters are about writing the story "Stone Cold" for the Lifetime Channel version of her stories, and the final script she handed in, which was not quite the version finally shown on the screen. In the end, they kept six lines out of what she wrote, which allowed her to be credited as the writer of the episode.

I really enjoyed this book, because I started reading the "Blood" books when they first came out (eons and eons ago...). I liked the characters and their interactions and relationships, and the idea that a vampire made a living as a romance author. It's been done again since then, but I remember smiling so hard my face hurt when I first read the books. It was wonderful to read all these short stories and remember my experiences of reading the original books.

The stories in this book are wonderful, expanding and sometimes explaining the things that happened in the stories. I especially enjoyed reading the stories involving Henry and his past, before he met Vicki, not so much the stories about when Vicki is a vampire, as I preferred Henry to Mike Celluci. But, to each their own, and any fan of the original books or of Tanya Huff's work will enjoy these books, no question about it.

The last two chapters I found the most fascinating. as well as a bit disheartening. Only six sentences survived out of an entire script? And yet that qualifies you to be credited as a writer? Being a writer myself, I'm not sure how I feel about that. It does make me sad, though.

New Rules by Bill Maher

This book, subtitled "Polite Musings from a Timid Observer" should come with the exclamation "NOT!" attached at the end. Because Bill Maher, his career as a talk show host in "Politically Incorrect" aside, is and was a stand-up comic, and the book is sprinkled with observations that are definitely Politically Incorrect, from pointing out that it's not racist not to hire black people as part of your state government when your state doesn't actually have any black people living in it, to musings on the shortcomings of Paris Hilton, like that she only has one expression and that she is totally fixated on herself, if the shots from her camera phone is any indication.

The book is laid out in 26 chapters, A-Z. Most of the new rules are given headings that correspond to the chapter letter, but the last entry in each chapter is usually longer than the rest and unconnected to the chapter's letter heading. Each New Rule is preceeded by the heading, so chapter A will have headings such as A Perfect Cliché, A Suit and Battery, AARP Yours, Abigail Van Buried, Abu Grab-Ass, Alter Boys and Ad Nauseam. Some have pictures to illustrate the points. All are funny, though someone easily offended won't find them funny in the least, and cynics may only be incited into a derisive laugh.

This is Bill Maher all over: Offensive to some, but unrelentingly funny to others, I enjoyed the book, although it's not everyone's cup of tea. I'd only recommend this book to someone I knew had a sense of humor similar to mine. Someone else might be offended rather than amused, or even left cold.

Halo Graphic Novel by Various

This graphic novel is based on the Halo series of Games by Bungie. None are about the man character, John 117, but about other characters and other parts of the story.

The first story in the book, "The Last Voyage of the Infinite Succor", tells of a covenant Elite Spec Ops commander called to aid the Covenant of a ship called the Infinite Succor. The Covenant suspect that the humans have attacked and nearly taken over the ship. But when he boards, he discovers that it isn't the humans, but the Flood that have boarded the ship, although some of them have infected human bodies as hosts.

The Spec Ops commander wants to simply blow the ship up to wipe out the infection of Flood, but he is denied permission and discovers that the Infinite Succor carries a Legate on board who will not release the ship until he can find a way to discover if the SOC is free of the Flood Infection. Once he does, he must find a way to rescue the Legate and destroy the ship before the Flood can break free. But can he do this by himself and still get the Legate to safety?

The Second Story is called "Armor Testing" and shows how the Earth forces field test armor meant for the Spartan units. But is such testing more dangerous to the tester, or to the people attacking it, or to those monitoring the test? At the end, we find that the armor will be going to John-117.

The Third story is called "Breaking Quarantine" and involves Sergeant Avery Johnson, trapped alone in an artifact infected by the flood. He has two choices, die there, or somehow fight his way out. But can he do so totally on his own? This story is dinstinguished by being totally without words.

The Final story is "Second Sunrise Over New Mombasa" and while the city is utterly deserted in the game, this story shows it before it was deserted, and why the people fled.

For a graphic novel, it's not a bad set of stories, but if you haven't played the games, like me, the stories appear a bit disjointed and not good matches for each other. Each is completely different in style, graphic design and storytelling, which is because each is done by a completely different writer and artist. But it makes the changes in storyline and art style seem jarring, as if each new story is a shock to the eyes.

However, if you aren't a fan of the games, or even if you are, unless you are a raving completist, this book is not going to be high on your list of stuff to buy as a game tie-in. It doesn't add much, and you can definitely get by without it. I see no reason to recommend it, as I didn't even find the stories all that interesting.

Peach Fuzz, Volume 3 By Lindsay Cibos and Jared Hodges

Peach, the Ferret pet of Amanda, is being especially destructive lately, mainly because she is tired of being alone and wants a handsome Prince as a mate. Not only is she gnawing at the bars of her cage, but trying to dig through the carpet in search of her freedom.

At school, Amanda's friend Mimi suggests a solution: getting another ferret for Peach to be friends with. Mimi's turtles died, so her mother got her three baby ferrets as pets instead, and they are very happy playing with each other. Perhaps Peach just needs a friend or two?

When Amanda gets home, she finds out that her mother has discovered the hole Peach made in the rug, but her solution, getting Peach declawed, was nixed by the vets. Apparently, getting ferrets declawed is like cutting off their fingers. Still, even Amanda's mother can't stand the look of Peach alone in her cage, so she reluctantly accedes to Amanda's request to get another Ferret.

At the pet store, Amanda wants a ferret that doesn't look like Peach at all, and picks out a "Fancy Ferret". The Pet Store Guy also says that the new ferret is a boy, and Amanda happily thinks of Peach and her new Ferret having babies. But the Pet Store Guy also says that the New Ferret is "Fixed", which perplexes Amanda. Are other Ferrets sold broken? She wonders. And what is a "broken" ferret anyway? She is rather grossed out by the litter boxes in the store, which are filled with Green Poop from the ferrets, which she assumes is due to bad food.

On the way home, Amanda and her mother name the new Ferret "Prince Edwin", from her mother's new romance novel. But while Peach is initially thrilled at the sight of her new Prince, on closer looks, he's rather awkward and clumsy and kind of stupid. Peach is upset and decides not to have anything to do with him, making him sleep across the room from her.

Amanda decides to take Peach to visit Mimi and her ferrets, and to stay the night, but her mother doesn't like Mimi's family, thinking them strange. But eventually, Amanda persuades her mother to let her go, and they visit Mim's family, who are mushroom worshippers. In the meantime, one of Mimi's ferrets died when her father accidentally sat on it, so now she only has two ferrets, both Albino.

Peach finds them strange and uncanny, like ghosts, and sneezes when meeting them. Mimi's ferrets are real gloom and doom types, but the next day, Amanda thinks that if Mimi's dead ferret is "broken", they should take it to the pet store where it can be "fixed". Needless to say, the Pet Store Guy is shocked, and Amanda's mother arrives to take her home. Along the way, she explains what an animal being "Fixed" means, and Amanda thinks that this means that neither Edwin nor Peach will die, and that's an okay trade for not having babies.

When they get home, Peach isn't feeling well, and a few days later, Edwin hurts himself and must be taken to the vet. In the meantime, Mimi calls and says her ferrets got sick after the visit by Peach. Amanda, who has been worried about Peach, finds her ill when she gets get home, and must take Peach to the vet as well. As Prince Edwin and Amanda nurse Peach through her illness, Peach becomes reconciled to living with both of them, And when she is well, makes plans to rebuild her kingdom.

This was a cute manga series, with a nice story as well as plenty of tips for buying, living with and having a ferret as a pet. Any young girl wanting a ferret as a pet will find a lot of good tips about pet ferrets, including discipline, feeding and watering, and now, veterinary care.

And it's no surprise, since the writer of the series, herself keeps ferrets as pets and knows a great deal about them, even if the ferret who Prince Edwin was based on, Elf, has sadly passed away from lymphoma.

This series is also cute in that it shows life from a ferret's eye point of view as well as that of the ferret's owner, Amanda. For instance, Peach doesn't know that Amanda's hands are part of her, but thinks of them as monsters, called "The Handra". Similarly, Amanda's stuffed toys are also monsters, but since they don't move on their own, Peach thinks of them as slaves in her kingdom.

This is a cute series with some great advice for ferret owners, but it's not a very deep story. Cute, but shallow. Still, for a girl crazy about owning Ferrets, this would be a good choice. For anyone else, you won't miss anything by not buying or reading it.

Dog Days by John Levitt

Mason is a magician, but not a stage magician, a practitioner. He used to work as an enforcer, keeping the magicians with small talents and limited morals from using their powers to fleece others. But then he gave it up to play Jazz and be his own boss. Now, his only reminder of the old days is his Ifrit, Louie, who has taken the form of a dog.

But one night on his way home, Mason is attacked by things that look like slugs, but have acid. He defeats them, and the next night, again on his way home, is sucked into a magical trap that resembles another world, but entirely without people... even Louie is missing. While in this world, though, Mason is approached by wolves, who lead him to the beach and dig up a strange gemstone for him. The gemstone stays with him even as he breaks out of the trap and back into the real world.

The next morning, he goes to see Victor, the leader of the enforcers he used to work for, and brings the gem with him. Victor says that the gems are, literally, priceless. But neither he nor any other of the practicioners have any idea what they are. But what they can do is boost the power of any practicioner who gets a hold of one. But since no one knows where they come from or where to get them, perhaps Mason should take a look into tracking this down, using his shadier contacts.

Mason does just that and finds the true seamy underside of magic: people who will pay anything for the gem he found, practicioners who battle each other for kicks and a temporary magical boost, and practicioners who have suddenly lost their ifrit companions. But in his investigations, Mason has really pissed someone off, and a practicioner named Christoph shows up one night in his apartment to try and buy him off with more of the gemstones everyone has been looking for. When Louie goes for Christoph, however, Christoph attacks Louie and freezes him in place, which angers Mason so much that he attacks Christoph with a bat, and has to seek out a healer to save his friend.

This focuses Mason on Christoph as someone who is in on where the gems are coming from, and when Louie goes missing, and Mason and his friend Campbell must find him, and in consequence discover exactly what the gems are: Ifrit eyes. But when Christoph challenges Mason to an all or nothing fight, how can Mason, so outclassed with the high state of Christoph's powers, ever hope to defeat him? Even with Victor and Mason's Mentor Eli on his side, how can he hope to win?

This was an unusual book that I ended up liking a great deal. Ostensibly the story of a guy and his dog, or a magician and his Ifrit, it delves deeply into the character of Mason and offers teasing tidbits of what Louie, Mason's Ifrit, is capable of. But those teasing tidbits are *all* we get. Even at the end of the novel, when it is revealed that Christoph was after Mason to get a hold of Louie and take his eyes, because Louie is something special as an Ifrit, we don't get a clue as to what makes him special except that he is a finder, and has a magical ability to "Find" things.

Why that makes him different from ordinary Ifrits isn't explained or examined, and since Louie is the only Ifrit we ever get to see in more than a passing way, we don't really have a clue, even by the end of the book, exactly why he's so special. I mean, I think I have a clue, given that Mason's special talent as a practicioner seems to be imprrovisational magic, but we don't know.

On the other hand, John Levitt is working on a sequel, so perhaps we'll see more about Louie and find out what makes him so special as an Ifrit. I certainly hope so, as I liked both characters and want to see more.

Lick of Frost by Laurell K. Hamilton

Meredith, or Merry, Gentry is the niece of Queen Andais, the Queen of Air and Darkness, ruler of the Unseelie Fae. She and her brutal cousin, Prince Cel, are struggling to succeed Andais as ruler of the Unseelie Fae. To do so, though, one of them must prove themselves fertile, either by getting pregnant (Merry) or impregnating another Fae (Cel).

Three of Merry's guards have been called into a lawyer's office to testify for supposedly having raped a female Seelie Fae of the Royal Court. However, none of them are guilty, and Merry knows this. She's wondering why her uncle Taranis, King of Light, would go so far as to try and have her guards accused of rape. What could he possibly want from her?

The lawyers question her and her guards in the presence of Ambassador Stevens, the United States' Ambassador to the Fae. But Merry doesn't know him very well, because he has never been to the Unseelie Court, only the Seelie Court. And it soon becomes obvious why when the Ambassador seems to become unwell and accuses Meredith and her guards of being monsters. The culprit for the change seems to be a watch given to the Ambassador by King Taranis, but being exposed to her and her guards as monsters is tearing away the Ambassador's sanity. The lawyers call help for him, and then call King Taranis, who seems to want Merry for some reason. When her guards remove her to keep Taranis from ensorcelling her with his magic, Taranis lashes out, injuring them.

But Taranis, too, is dragged away from the mirror by his own guards, and one of the Seelie Fay of the Court, Sir Hugh, tells Merry that King Taranis is not well, and that he and many of the other seelie would offer her the throne if they could.

Merry doesn't agree and ends the call, then accompanies her guards to the hospital, where they are treated. As soon as they return home, she calls Queen Andais by mirror to tell her of the offer from the Seelie Fae. Andais, however, has already heard and is enraged by the news. She has taken out her wrath on another Guard that was formerly Merry's- Crystall. Merry tells Andais she did not accept the offer, and her aunt does not believe her, until Merry swears the most potent oath the Fey can make. Then, she tells Merry that she, Andais, is close to hating Merry because of how she seems more Seelie than unSeelie. And that Andais's guards seem to want Merry to rule more than Andais or Cel.

Merry hasn't been feeling well, and this isn't putting her in a good mood. She thinks she's caught a cold, and compared to her guards and the men she loves, including Frost and Darkness, she will grow old and die, being merely mortal, while they stay young and beautiful forever. When she shares this fear with Frost, however, he tells her he will love her even when she is old and gray, for that is how he came to be.

For he was once Jack Frost, but fell in love with a peasant girl who had Faerie Sight. When she and her mother fell on hard times, he brought them food and wood. And when they were accused of being witches, he saved them, although her mother died, and he beseeched the goddess for a fully human form, and ended up marrying the girl and loving her all her life. It was love that formed him, more so than magic. Merry feels better and has sex with him, only to find Andais peeking in on them.

She and Merry talk some more, and then Merry must leave to prepare for having sex with two Redcaps who want to lie with her for the power she will bring them. And since she owes them a favor, and they will use their powers for her, she agrees. With them comes contingent of Redcaps, one of whom Merry knows. But she doesn't even have to touch them to bring their powers to the fore, and those of the Redcaps as well. But Frost, the man she loves, becomes a white Stag, fated to be sacrificed.

Afterwards, she goes outside to rest, and is kidnapped by her Uncle Taranis, who hits her so hard he gives her a concussion. He brings her back to the Seelie faerie mound, where she discovers that she is not sick, she is pregnant, with twins, and that each of her babies has three separate fathers. But can she deal with Taranis, now completely insane and wanting to marry her and proclaim himself father of her children, and can she keep her wits together and let the world know what has been happening to her, even as she grieves over the loss of her love, her Killing Frost?

Laurell K. Hamilton has recieved a lot of flack lately for writing more about sex than actual plots or romance, but in this series, I don't find all the sex distasteful or too much, because in the context of the characters of the book, it all fits the characters. Sex, to the fae, is affection and caring, and even just about sex, sometimes. This attitude towards sex is evident in the scene where Merry is being quizzed about her guards and their sexual habits. First, she sees nothing wrong with talking about sex, and isn't embarrassed to discuss it, and 2) she feels no shame in discussing the intimate details of her sex life with people who are, to her, strangers.

Plus, she *is* trying to get pregnant, so having lots of men in and out of her bed is not only acceptable, but something she needs to do: have lots and lots of sex and get pregnant, But sex also ties the men to her with bonds of obligation and affection. She is the only sexual outlet they have, except for masturbation, which she allows them, but Andais did not. The fact that she doesn't abuse them during sex, as Andais did, only makes them love her more.

And of course, now that Merry has won the race for the Unseelie throne, she's also lost the man she loves, Frost, to the magic she's brought back to the Fae. And by the end, she's won it. She's pregnant. She knows she won. But was it worth it, to lose the man she loved, her killing Frost? Mercy certainly doesn't seem to think so. Her daughter will never know her father, and Mercy can only feel sadness.

Reading this series takes Mercy through a gamut of emotions, from joy and exaltation to loss and sadness and fear, but I have enjoyed reading the series from the beginning. Although there is an element of "Sex adding powers to her repetoire", it's more the other way around here. Except for one instance, Mercy doesn't get powers from having sex, she gives them to others. I find this series fascinating and fun to read, and I'll recommend it to others. Yes, a lot of it is bound up in sex, but here, it comes with the territory.

Dorothea, Volume 2 by Cuvie

Dorothea has been accepted into the Landsknecht as an infantryman, at the fee of 6 Gulders. Gyurk is still attempting to shield her from the realities of war, given his pledge to her grandmother to try and keep her safe. But with a battle coming up can he keep her safe while not dying himself?

In her first battle, Dorothea kills a man, and finds a crucifix on his body. The men they are fighting against are religious separatists, which makes them Anathema to the Vatican and the local church. Dorothea picks up the unusual crucifix, but is affected by having killed her first man in battle.

When she comes upon a woman about to be raped, she rescues her and returns her to her family, only to find that the man she killed was the woman's husband, and when the woman finds the crucifix on Dorothea, she turns on her, blaming Dorothea (rightly) for her husband's death. Finding all this out makes Dorothea exhausted, confused and shell-shocked. She stumbles away from the woman's farmhouse, only to see it be set on fire by some of the Landsknechts, burning the woman, her mother, and her children alive inside. She tries to stop her fellow soldiers, but they overpower her, and she is rescued by Gyurk, who tells her that this is what he didn't want her to see or experience, that war damages you inside, and he didn't want it to happen to her.

He also tells Dorothea that to avoid being accused of being a witch, she should make friends with her fellow soldiers. The more of them that are on her side, the better. She does so, and discovers that the religious separatists that they were fighting were burning women, and women like her especially, as witches. But when the commander asks her to pretend to actually be a witch to draw the other separatists out of hiding and into a battle, Gyurk doesn't want her to take the risk. Can Dorothea face up to her fears and take on the role? Or will she refuse, risking an ambush by the enemy forces?

This second book expands on the promise of the first as Dorothea faces off in her first actual battle and must deal with the bad and evil acts that many soldiers perform. She's shocked by the difference between sparring a battle and actually fighting one and killing someone.

So far, my feeling about the series has not materialized into actuality, but it looks like this series will be ongoing into the future, and I am already looking forward to reading the next one.

Dorothea Volume 1 by Cuvie

Dorothea Essenbach is an albino, one of the "white Children" that other towns and countries scorn, but who are protected in the small town of Naulders in what will someday become Germany. Naulders considers the children to be lucky, but elsewhere they are thought to be witches or children of the devil, unlucky and cursed. They live together in the "White House", but with the Vatican agreeing that such children are cursed, it doesn't seem that the "White House" or its children, will be long for this world.

Dorothea is the heir to not only ownership of the "White House" through her grandmother, Frau Schanzgard, but also to the post of seer. She is frustrated by her lack of seeing ability and by being stuck In Naulders when she so dearly wishes to see the world. But when Mercenaries acting as Bandits attack the White House for the riches they believe it to contain, Dorothea, who has been training with the sword and other weapons, goes after them to save her grandmother and the other children who live there. Despite her prowess, and after killing a number of the mercenaries, she is captured and about to be raped when she is saved by the return of her childhood friend Gyurk. Together, they slay the remaining bandits and Dorothea, suffering from the effects of too much sun exposure, passes out.

When she revives, she is back inside in her room, but she is angry at Gyurk for not returning home for the past two years. She also gets the impression that Gyurk looks down on her and her ability to fight. But one thing is clear: Naulders and the White House are at risk in the war that is currently sweeping the land, and Dorothea wishes to go out and fight for Naulders and the children that the White House protects. Gyurk tries to talk her out of it, and Dorothea becomes angry about Gyurk disrespecting her skill. She challenges him to a duel and wins, and he confesses that he just wants to protect her innocence, which is at risk if she goes to war. She will also need s letter allowing her to fight, and Dorothea knows that they can get one from Princess Else, the daughter of the ruler of Naulders and another "White Child". She was raised with Dorothea and Gyurk in the White House, but her father took her back into his home, and now keeps her indoors all day, but whether to protect her or to keep others from finding out that she is his child is unknown.

Else is upset that Gyurk will soon be leaving with Dorothea. Now both her friends will have abandoned her, and she will have no visits to look forward to, but eventually, she agrees to provide the letter. But when Dorothea and Gyurk are seen in her chamber, it almost puts her in the hands of the Vatican, who are sure that this is due to witchcraft. In the end, Else is able to give Dorothea her letter, and then Dorothea and Gyurk go to the Landknecht mercenary company to win Dorothea her place.

Due to the number of women claiming to be able to fight and leaving after being given their first wages, she will have to fight to win her place in the company... to a knight who she insulted when he assumed she was a camp follower! Can Dorothea defeat the man and win a place in the company, all after Gyurk has warned her not to stand out?

This is an unusual manga, in that it doesn't take place in Japan, but in feudal-era Germany, when Germany was a patchwork quilt of little princedoms and fiefs, each at war with the others over land, money and power. Add in the fact that the Pope and the Vatican held a great deal of influence over this land and these tiny kingdoms, and you have an explosive situation for Dorothea to be in.

And yet, despite the unreality of a woman, and an albino woman, being able to train and go to war as a Landknecht in such a time, the story actually makes you believe that it was possible for just such an event to happen. And even more so, to cheer her on.

This is a slim volume, and the story is well laid out, but I have a strong suspicion as to where at least some of the story is to go: 1) Dorothea is the heir to a long line of seers. She doesn't have the ability now, but will gain it at some point along the way- probably at either a most inconvenient time (In the midst of a fight or battle) or at a most convenient time (When they are about to ride into an ambush, thus saving the company) and 2) Dorothea will eventually be unsuccessful in changing the wider world's perception of Albinos, but will end up saving herself and the children of the White House.

Time will tell, but I'll be looking forward to it.

Into the Shadow by Christina Dodd

Karen Sonnet is in Nepal to build her father a hotel. Her father specializes in building "Adventure Destinations", and Karen is his best, and hardest, worker. But the conditions here are unusual, even for her: the workers say the mountain is haunted by evil spirits, her second in command would rather sleep around and drink rather than do his job, and she is being visited by a "dream lover" who she doesn't know, but who is always gone in the morning when she wakes.

Then, a blast on the mountain unearths a small mummy in the rubble, a girl who somehow clutches a religious icon and opens her eyes when Karen touches her. They share the same color eyes, and she hands the icon to Karen before her body disintegrates. But then the mountain awakens, burying her second-in-command, and she is saved from dying by the man who has been her dream lover, a man she comes only to know as Warlord. Warlord carries her off, makes love to her, and will not let her go. She tries to escape, only to be caught by Warlord, who manacles her with cuffs of solid gold that cannot be removed except by cutting them off.

Karen hates him, and even fears him, but never gives up trying to escape. Until the day when Warlord and his forces are attacked by many other groups, and he lets her go to escape while he and his men go to fight the invaders. She returns home, battered and heartsick from her captivity and returns to his father, who only has words of scorn for her. It seems her second-in-command survived and told her father that she was at fault for not building the hotel and had run off to be with her leather-jacketed biker lover.

In his anger, her father lets slip that he is only her adoptive father, that her mother had slept with his best friend, an American Indian, and run off to be with him when she became pregnant. Later, they died in an Avalanche, and she begged her former husband to raise her daughter... and so he had, but without love or feeling. Faced with the truth, Karen walks away from Jackson Sonnet and tells him she won't be back. She has plenty of money, so she doesn't need him any more. She plans to do all the things she wanted to do, but never had the time before. He tells her she'll come crawling back to him, scornfully, but she just walks out.

She spends a year travelling through Europe, having adventures and experiencing life, before taking a job as an Entertainment Director at a posh and expensive Spa. Then, another year later, she meets a man who reminds her of Warlord, a software Engineer named Rick Wilder. At first, she is ready to flee everything, but a friend of hers convinces her to stay, and she begins to think that maybe Rick is nothing like Warlord. They flirt with each other, and on the last night of his stay, he kisses her, and she realizes the truth. Rick Wilder *is* the man she knew as Warlord.

Rick, or to give his full name, Adrik, is the descendant of a man who sold his own and his family's souls to the Devil in exchange for health and power. Each member of the family has the ability to change into animal form, but the more they do so, the more they are drawn to the dark side. Adrik's father, Leo Varinski, met a woman named Zorana and fell so deeply in love with her that he gave up the family business of being mercenaries and assassins and moved with her to America, changing their surname to Wilder. But there was a prophecy associated with Zorana, that her four sons would find the Icon that Satan had broken into four pieces and hid all over the world, buried in spots where no one would ever find them. If her sons met a woman who had a piece of the Icon, they would not only find their true mates, but break the curse forever.

Adrik, however, has been tracked by the Varinskis, who do not want to end the curse and lose their power. There are signs that the curse is going away on its own, as the Varinskis are already losing their unnatural good health. So when a Varinski who becomes a cobra sneaks in to Karen's room to try and kill her before Adrik can get the icon, Adrik must save her, and take her to his family and win her over before the Varinski's find them and kill them both?

I didn't find the first part of the book, when Adrik was Warlord, as he embodies all the worst traits of an Alpha hero, but he certainly gets better when he shows up at the spa where Karen works and we discover what has been happening to him since he and Karen parted. And it isn't good. And that's good for the reader, because he has a long way to go to redeem himself

But he certainly manages it. Choosing Karen over vengeance goes a long way towards making him warm and believeable and sympathetic to the reader, and the fact that he asks Karen to forgive him is very good as well. Realizing that he did wrong by her and now he wants to atone also won my sympathy. And his relationship with his mother, and his father, and the way he apologizes to them for running off and causing them pain made me cross the line and support him.

Karen, on the other hand, always had my support. She's in a hard position, but goes all out in both love and war, and I can understand why she wants to get away from Warlord when she finally realizes he is her nighttime lover and is repelled by the way he treats her when he isn't making love to her. But even she can see how much he has changed when she gets to know him after meeting him again. I could also believe why she fell in love with him.

Despite a rough start, this book did suck me in, and while I didn't find it so compelling that I would buy it, I did eventually find it enjoyable, though more towards the end than at the beginning. Would I recommend this book to others? Yes, but I'd warn them about the beginning and tell them to keep reading.

The First Law Book One:The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

Logen Ninefingers is a Barbarian in trouble. Trapped by the Shanka on the side of the mountain, it's not clear if he'll get out of trouble this time. Logen is famous, or rather, infamous, for his exploits in the North, having left a trail of blood and dead bodies behind him since he was a young man. But now he's getting older and some of those dead bodies include his wife and their children, and he's increasingly uncertain that this is how he wants to spend the rest of his life, however long that lasts.

He manages to escape, leaving his men behind when they are separated by the Shanka, and makes his way south, where he is contacted by a student of Bayaz, the First Mage. Bayaz has need of Logen, and asks the Barbarian to travel with his student to his academy, where he will explain more. Logen agrees, having nothing left to lose, and must save the student when the other man falls sick after having lost the supplies and mounts that were supposed to get them to the Academy faster.

Sand den Glokta used to be a celebrated soldier, until he was captured by the Enemy Gurkish and brutally tortured. He came back less than a man, teeth broken in half, wracked by pain and missing toes. Now he's employed as an Inquisitor, wringing corruption out of the Empire one confession at a time. All his friends abandoned him after his return, and so he has no friends, just a steady succession of work. But even his work is being co-opted by his superiors to the outcomes that they want.

When Bayaz shows up in the city to take up the post of First Magi in the Closed Council that actually runs the Empire with the Emperor sick and dying, his superiors assign Glokta to pierce through the deception and show Bayaz to be nothing more than a charlatan pretending to be the great Bayaz, who could not be alive after all this time. Glokta has his suspicions, but none of his investigations can prove anything one way or another... until Bayaz sets them all to rest by opening the building previously thought unopenable: The House of the Maker, the mage who set the Empire in motion, of whom Bayaz was a student.

Ferro Maljinn is a former slave fighting against the Gurkish, the same people who tortured Glokta. The Gurkish took her from her home and enslaved her, and now she has won her way free and takes her vengeance on the Gurkish people. But they are making an effort to catch her, sending Eaters out after her with orders to bring her back to the Gurkish capitol and put her in a cage in which she will eventually die. But this plan is foiled by a Magi named Yulwei, who hides her and brings her north to the City of the Empire to meet Bayaz, who needs her help for a mission against the Gurkish and the Northern Barbarians. But can she give up her little vengeances for a bigger one?

Captain Jezal dan Luthar is the hard-drinking, hard-wenching, poker-playing guardsman with ambitions of winning the Union fencing contest. But to do so he will have to give up all his favorite pasttimes to do so. His fellow guardsman, Collum West, is a Hard-working commoner that the noble-born Jezal scorns... until he meets West's sister, Ardee, a bored woman who likes to stir up trouble. For her, Jezal will train hard and win the contest, if he can. But does Ardee truly love him, or is she just out to make more trouble by leading on a young nobleman? And what will Collem West to do her when he finds out she has been dabbling with Jezal?

The Union is heading to war with the Gurkish and the Northern Barbarians. The Barbarians have the Shanka behind them, and the Gurkish are allied with the Eaters of Human Flesh. Can the Union survive, or will it go down in a rain of blood, overextended in a war on two fronts at once? And what does Bayaz have in mind to save the Union his master helped found?

This was a hard book to read, because none of the characters are really noble. I suppose you might call it realistic, but all of the characters do things for selfish reasons, and none of them seem to believe in human nobility. Then again, given how the characters around them act and behave, I suppose it's only fair, because nobody acts out of nobility. The closest anyone comes is Bayaz, and we don't get to see much of his motivation, so it's unclear if he *is* being noble and concerned for others, or if he's just offended that anyone would try to destroy the nation that his former mentor began.

Given that this is fantasy, it's a decidedly gothic, post-modern type of fantasy, and reading it is less transporting than it is a slog through characters who don't care unless you shove some kind of payment under their face or wave a self-aggrandizing reason for them to do something. There's no nobility in this world, no kindness, and nothing uplifting to fight for. The best you can do is slog on, and if you're alive at the end of the day, count yourself lucky.

I found it distasteful to read and hard to read, in that none of the characters made me want to stand up and root for them to succeed. I guess Logen Ninefingers came the closest, as he never made any pretensions to be noble or concerned for others. But I haven't exactly been inspired to pick up the rest of the series from this volume. Fans of traditional fantasy won't like it one bit, and while the writing is good and the scenes are evocative and well-described, none of the characters appealed to me or made me care about them in any way. This one won't ever be on my list of favorite books.

The Unnatural Enquirer by Simon R. Green

We return to the Nightside and the character of John Taylor, the P.I. with a special ability to "find" anything, which he inherited from his mother, Lilith. Yes, that Lilith. After doing a job for Walker, former agent of the Powers that ran Nightside and now seemingly unaffiliated but retaining his powers; Taylor and his love, Suzie Shooter, are sent to track down a voodoo priest named Max Maxwell, who has been mucking around with an artifact named the Aquarius Key, which can open portals to other dimensions. Max used it to try and stick the Voudoun loa in human bodies and use them as his tools.

Naturally, this peeved off the Loa and now they have come for Max. But he fled, and none of Suzie's people can find him. Thus, Walker turns to John Taylor, warning him that if Taylor can't locate the Key and Maxwell within the next three hours, Walker will have to unleash his dogs in Nightside, and that will be very unpleasant.

One short ramble to and from Max Maxwell's former lair and office bring John and Susie to the Nightside Fun Fair, an attempt at bringing some chills to the Nightside of a more harmless variety, but which failed when the Fair came to life and began attacking the revellers who came to it. Now, the magic there is so twisted that no one dares enter... with the exception of Maxwell, who apparently hopes that the twisted magic will hide him and the Key. John and Susie manage to track him down and send him to the dimension of the loa using the Key, thus taking care of him for good.

That done, they separate, because even though they love each other, Susie finds it hard to even touch people without hurting them, and that holds true even for Taylor, the man she loves. Taylor is soon summoned to the home of Nightside's Largest Scandal sheet purporting to be a Newspaper, the Supernatural Inquirer, which has been threatened with destruction, and actually destroyed, so many times that it now exists in its own dimension for safety.

The sub-editor of the Inquirer hires Taylor to track down a man named Pen Donavon, a man who supposedly caught a broadcast from the afterlife on his television and taped it, then burned it to DVD. He sold the rights to the DVD to the Inquirer, but then disappeared and is unable to be found. The Inquirer wants the DVD most desperately, as it could show proof of the afterlife, whether it is Heaven or Hell.

The Inquirer offers Taylor a Million pounds if he can find the disc, and assign him a sidekick for the duration of the job, the half Demon Bettie Divine, who regards John with an almost worshipful air for his past exploits. John doesn't want or need a sidekick or tag-along, but feels he has no choice in the matter. Someone is blocking his supernatural talent, so he'll have to rely on old-fasioned legwork for this one.

But John isn't the only one out after the DVD. There are plenty who would like to have it, and John and Bettie interview them all, only to realize that the most feared and dangerous figure in the Nightside, The Removal Man, is after it as well. And since no one has faced the Removal Man and lived, there is a reason to fear. No one knows who or what gave the Removal Man his powers, but anyone he doesn't like simply gets removed from both life and the Nightside, and they never come back.

Also, since the great Lilith War that so rocked Nightside, Walker, the man in charge, is being pushed at by some of the great movers and shakers in Nightside. Can Walker and whatever Patron is powering him now overcome the people who would run the Nightside in Walker's place? Or will their attempts to take power throw Nightside straight into another war? Will Pen Donovon's DVD set off a war amongst the Gods on the Street of Gods? And can Taylor and Bettie Divine find him before the powderkeg goes up?

This was a welcome sight in my Inbox at work. The book is short, but easy to read and moves at a good, clipping pace that prevents you from getting bogged down. The book might be rather thin for a novel, but is packed with so much story handled so well that it feels much larger than it actually is. Simon R. Green is a master storyteller who can pack more ideas into his story than seems readily feasible for the space the words occupy.

I'm always a sucker for a good John Taylor story, and this one is him at his best. The voice is sure and engaging, even to the way he describes the love of his life, Suzie Shooter: "Suzie Shooter, also known as 'Shotgun Suzie' and 'Oh Christ it's her Run!'". Every line brought a smile to my face as I revisited the characters I have come to know and love along with John Taylor. The wit sears and crackles on every page, and I love this series, as they say, like a fat boy loves his candy. I can't get enough.

For those who can't guess where I'm going with this one: read this series, and read it now. It's a can't miss for those who love smart writing with a whip-sharp sense of humor and a love for Film Noir detectives. You can't go wrong with the Nightside novels, and I can't recommend them highly enough. Go, and read!

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A. J. Jacobs

A.J. Jacobs was an Agnostic Jew when he decided, based on the memory and example of his ex-Uncle Gil to explore the faith of his ancestors, and to try to live as close to what the Bible teaches as it is possible to do so in this modern, almost strictly secular world. But is it possible to do exactly as the Bible teaches? Is it possible to live as it instructs its believers to do, and to the things it says, and avoid the behaviors, mindsets and actions it says to avoid?

Jacobs goes through the Bible and makes a list of the rules to follow, and stops shaving, which soon changes his appearance from "Clean-cut and professional" to someone people will cross the street to avoid. But the hardest rules for him to follow are, surprise!, the ones about disciplining your children, especially the "spare the rod and spoil the child" type. Or the one about killing your child should they disrespect you.

To help him in his quest, Jacobs assembled a "Faith Council" of various rabbis, priests, ministers and other men of faith to advise him on the really hard questions. And he takes trips all over to help him understand Biblical scripture, from the Creation Museum to a trip to the small church home of a group of serpent handlers, trying to understand what each has to say about the Bible and how they interpret it.

He even gets to travel to Jerusalem and meet his ex-Uncle Gil, now shunned by his entire family, and realize that his "uncle" just seems to view him as one more person to convert to his way of thinking about faith and the Bible. Though he enjoys the trip to Israel, he realizes that Gil's way is not his way, and he doesn't want to continue the association.

And yet, in the end, he does eventually feel more whole and at peace. But it doesn't last, once he cuts his beard and shaves, and returns to the secular modern world. But he does come to the conclusion that, contrary to what some sects believe, *everyone* practices cafeteria religion from the Bible. It's just what they choose and what they ignore are all different.

This was a fairly fascinating book, but lost me when the author didn't discuss how many rules in the Bible are against the law nowadays. Even his extremely brief foray into stoning people for their sins (involving tiny pebbles dropped on their shoes because of his dislike of confrontation) basically shows how ridiculous some of the "rules" in the Bible are and how ridiculous they are in the modern age.

Perhaps it was just this cowardice that made him not confront some of the most extreme of the Bible rules: that if someone not of your religion proselytizes you, you are to kill him. And if you catch someone of your family trying to convert people to a religion not your own, you are supposed to not only kill the members of your family who are proselytizing this other faith, but anyone they might have converted.

An interesting book, but it avoids some of the most confrontational parts of the Bible and seems to fall for apologetics in others. Worth reading if you stumble across a copy, but not worth spending a lot of time seeking out.

The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls by John R. King

Thomas Carnacki is an Englishman of Russian ancestry in Reichenbach on a tour, but he's fallen on hard times, penniless and starving, trying to argue with a rat for a piece of moldy cheese discarded by the proprietor of the cheese shop in town. Yet, when he sees a beautiful blonde woman come by with a picnic basket full of bread and cheese and wine, he tries to ingratiate himself with her so that he can share her wonderful feast and even possibly seduce her.

The girl, whose name is Anna, takes him to picnic by the falls, but as they do so, spots two men quarrelling on the other side of the falls. One man is pushed over the side, and the two of them see the other go as well. They manage to rescue one of the men, who they pull out from the tidal pool, and found that, due to his injuries, he can no longer remember his name or who he is.

Then the other man appears and starts shooting at them, forcing them to try and escape with this man, who they call Harold Silence, in deference to the Tailor's nametag found in his coat. The three of them try to get away, but the man continues to show up and follow them, until they bury him under an avalanche of snow and are forced to spend the night in a small cave, high up on the mountain.

Who is Harold Silence? And why is this man seeking him so viciously? Silence tells Thomas that the girl is with the man trying to kill them, but Thomas won't believe it... until Anna confesses that this is true. We then get to see that the man is a professor, lately of Mathematics, named James Moriarity, and how he came to be the head of a crime syndicate, involving a demon and Jack the Ripper, along with a female prostitute whom Moriarty rescued from the street, educated and who later became his wife and mother of his child.

Silence and Carnacki have gone to the local sanatorium, hoping to find a cure to Silence's amnesia. But the doctor there is in the pay of Moriarty, and with the help of Anna, who may be Moriarty's daughter but is by no means in league with him, they rescue Silence and help him discover that he is Sherlock Holmes, who came to Reichenbach to capture his nemesis.

But can they set a trap for Moriarty, who seems one step ahead of them all the way? And when they do, and manage to drive the demon from Moriarty, it enters into Holmes, who takes up crime in Moriarty's place, but in Paris, not London. But with Anna and Moriarty both dead, can Thomas do the unthinkable and outwit not only Holmes, but the demon inside him?

This was an unusual book, adding real live demons to the Holmesian canon, but it worked for me. The story is taut, well-written and engaging, and makes you believe in the circumstances of the story, no matter how far-fetched they may seem on the surface.

Carnacki is a reliable narrator, if somewhat of a would-be con man. The story is told from both his point of view and that of Holmes/Silence, albeit in third person, limited subjective format. The story has Holmes believing in the Demon, but eventually reverting to his more normal "no supernatural things" belief within a few pages of being rescued and the demon driven out of him. This is necessary if the story is to be considered part of the Holmesian canon, but comes out looking a bit ridiculous, as if Holmes is now discarding his "Whatever remains must be the truth" saying. Either that, or Holmes is reacting hysterically to the fact that even someone with his intellect and cold logic, could be taken over by something as irrational and unbelievable as a demon, which is also not a good fit with Sherlock Holmes's mind as is usually portrayed.

Aside from this, I found the book to be wonderful and well worth the read. Despite not exactly fitting the Holmesian canon, anyone who is able to read it will find it a gripping story that carries you along until the very last page. Definitely recommended.

Return to Treasure Island and the Search for Captain Kidd by Barry Clifford with Paul Perry

Captain Kidd was a famous and well-known Pirate, but he didn't start out that way. He was once a wealthy merchant of New York during the colonial period. But his decision to become a privateer and prey on French shipping for the glory of England led to his downfall: slipping down a morally slippery slope into actual piracy against the ships of England, the country he was ostensibly working for as a privateer, and becoming a petty tyrant who incited two rebellions against his captaincy, in both cases, losing the ships he was captaining. And then, killing a man with a thrown bucket, the crime that eventually led him to the gallows and the gibbet.

But this is not strictly Captain Kidd's story, it is also the story of diver and expedition leader Barry Clifford and his attempt to find the remains of Kidd's first ship, the Adventure Galley, sunk near the island nation of Madegascar. Even that isn't certain, with the ship in a graveyard of plundered and sunken vessels towed offshore of a small island called Ile St. Marie and allowed to sink- both as hazards to any ships coming to take care of the pirates, and as a means to dispose of ships that had been burnt or were no longer seaworthy.

Ile St. Marie also has its story to tell, as it was once known as the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island", and a small neighboring island better known to the locals as "Pirate's Island" is the supposed repository of Pirate Treasure through sealed-up tunnels that supposedly lead to a vast storehouse of gold, gems and other treasure that await in the depths of the island, now forever sealed off by the concrete laid by a greedy man whose greed lead to his death. The inhabitants of Ile St. Marie think the island is cursed and aren't easily persuaded to go there.

Despite the dives being made on the boat, the permit the team holds is only to take pictures, not to excavate, and so they must go home and return to the island after they have recieved the proper permits. With Discovery Channel coming back to film the discovery of the ship, the team find themselves blocked by a jealous rival of author Clifford, one who takes as much pleasure in denying Clifford the right to dive as in bad-mouthing him to the officials and government of Madgascar and Ile St. Marie. Despite repeated attempts to appease the other man, he refuses to give up, believing himself to be wronged by Barry Clifford in the past. Even though he is also denied permission to dive on the wreck that he wants to excavate, the other man doesn't care. He who stays last, wins, he tells the author.

As the negotiations and diplomacy slowly drag out, author Clifford stays long past the time when he was supposed to leave, only to have an unexpected ending to his tale that frees him to confirm his suspicions about the presence of the Adventure Galley. But in between, the Deeds and trial of Captain Kidd are contrasted with the efforts of Barry Clifford to confirm that the Galley he found is the Adventure Galley.

This was a fascinating book, both for the historical story of the real Captain Kidd (who was quite a failure as a Pirate Captain, not to mention as a Privateer. The causes of his problems and downfall show that being a pirate at that time wasn't an easy task, and shows that the truth about pirates is not what is so often depicted in the stories of fiction. To give just one example, a pirate captain was democratically elected by his crew, and woe betide the captain who failed to catch booty-laden ships, or who tried to lord it over his men, as most of them earned a one-way trip to the bottom of the ocean at the many hands of their enraged crew.

The modern day story is equally fascinating, with its depiction of how hard it is to be an archaeologist when dealing with the government or rivals blocking you out of misplaced revenge or aggression, and the sad end to the tale of bad-mouthing and backstabbing is a depiction that archaeology is nowhere near as fun or dangerous as the Indiana Jones films would have you believe. It's just as exciting and full of finds, but in a different way. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to people looking for a real true-life adventure story.

Two to the Fifth, A Xanth Novel by Piers Anthony

Cyrus Cyborg, and his steed, Don Donkey, are headed to the Castle of the Good Magician Humphrey. Cyrus's father is a robot, and his mother is a Barbarian, and each has different ideas about what they want him to do with his life. His father wants him to become a leader of robots, while his mother wants him to carry off a wild barbarian wife, but Cyrus doesn't know what he wants, and he'll ask the Good Magician what it would be best for him to do.

On the way to the castle, he encounters a few women who wish to become actresses, and a woman named Tess Tosterone, who is pushy and mouthy. She tells him most men want to persuade women to lie with them, but Cyrus is so innocent that he doesn't know what she means. They end up spending the night together after Cyrus experiences some kissing, but all they do is sleep. The next day, he travels to the Good Magician's Castle and must pass the three challenges, which he does, and is told his wish is to become a playwright, and to make plays and entertain people. He suddenly realizes this is true, but the good magician gives him something he must do to pay for his answer: he must become good enough to be directed to give a command performance by Ragna Roc, a bird who believes he is as powerful as a God. Then, he must find some way to overcome the bird, whose magical power is to turn people into illusions who are like ghosts in their inability to touch or be touched. By demonstrating his power, he has convinced several villages to make him their supreme ruler, and the Good Magician is concerned as to what could happen should his influence continue to spread. He is powerful enough that even The Good Magician doesn't feel he could prevail against Ragna Roc.

But Cyrus will have help on his endeavours, in the form of Rhythm, one of the triplet sorceresses whose power squares when two of them play music together, and cubes when all three play together. Surely they will be powerful enough to defeat this interloper? But first Cyrus must get busy and craft plays with which to tour and find actresses and actors with whom to work. And to do that, he must craft his own writer's block, and infuse it with the power of a muse while in the dream realm.

Cyrus does so, and makes contact with Rhythm. However, he soon runs into a dilemma: all the actresses in the company are after him for themselves, and even Rhythm is experiencing a very un-childlike sort of interest in him. Cyrus is somewhat repulsed by this, as Romancing a 12 year old girl is something that goes directly against the Adult Conspiracy. Even so, he finds himself attracted to the Princess. Then she shares with him a story of working with time and aging a full ten years, only to regain her former age when she left the area, leaving her with a residue of adult feelings. Then, she transformes into an adult via a spell and pushes him into a love spring, and he is lost, falling fully into love with her instead of being halfway there.

But the spell backfires, summoning a stork and continuing to age her and her daughter, who she names Kadence. Kadence quickly grows into a six year old before Rhythm can halt the spell, and stays after Rhythm reverts to being a child herself again, as neither Cyrus nor Rhythm can bear to put a child of theirs into non-existence. But this has other consequences as well. How will they explain this child? and what will happen to them when the forces of the Adult Conspiracy find out? For that matter, what will happen when other adults find out? Cyrus tries to put off these fears while continuing to work on his plays, and his story of forbidden love goes on to find its way into his work.

Finally, with three plays under their belt, Cyrus and his company begin touring and even visit the Curse Friends to show off their plays, which are wildly successful. So successful that the company stays with him as he takes off for the villages controlled by Ragna Rok. But can Cyrus and his company resist joining Ragna Rok and his harem of female roks and human (and other) followers? Will Cyrus be persuaded to join by being able to love Rhythm openly and freely inside the bounds of Ragna Rok's lands? And can he figure out the "Two to the Fifth" clue that holds the clue to defeating Ragna Rok once and for all?

I liked this book, though I was made more than a bit uncomfortable by the Romance plot between Cyrus and Rhythm. Yes, technically he was only two years old, thus being even younger than her, but he was assembled an adult, which made him an adult under the rules of the Adult Conspiracy (intended to protect children from knowing about sex and other adult topics until they actually become adults. And despite the contortions the book went through to show us that Rhythm was more or less an adult because of the ten years she experienced working with time, after which she reverted to her more childish-aged body, often strained my credulity a bit too far. I suppose this may have been the author's condemnation of the way kids nowadays grow up too fast, exposed to the ideas of sex and other adult things early and how it causes them problems later on in life, but it just made me feel uneasy. And in the end, both characters are punished for it, but not in a way that seems much like an actual punishment.

As for the rest of the story, Ragna Roc himself barely seems to come into it, as he doesn't appear until fairly late in the book. It's almost as if he was thrown in as an afterthought, and his plans and defeat weren't as integral to the book, making it a less than successful story for me. Once again, a bit too much attention was given to how often Cyrus and Rhythm made an ellipsis (...}, and was much more indicative of real sex as opposed to the "Cuddle close and summon the stork" route seen in earlier books. I don't know if this is an indication that Piers Anthony is tired of the whole thing and thus less likely to sugarcoat aspects of Xanth, or if he's simply turning into a dirty old man, as some people I know seem to think, but it was rather disturbing to me. At least the puns are still there, but don't take attention away from the somewhat distasteful aspects of the story.

This story had more problems than I am used to seeing or reading about in a Xanth book, but I will read others in the series. I'm just not looking forward to them as much as I am used to.

Vamps by Nancy A. Collins

Lilith Todd is the darling of her family, one of the vampires born into vampirehood, who still can stand the sunlight and have reflections. But this lasts only until they are 24 or 25, where they lose their reflections permanently and marry to increase their families connections. Her family is one of the thirteen clans of Old Blood Vampires, each ruling one portion of the world, and she attends the elite Bathory academy with other children of the Old Bloods.

Through a willingness to break the rules and drink the blood of strangers, thus breaking the rules, at a vampire-owned club called the Belfry, Lilith is banned from the club for three days. The next night, she and her friends meet to go "slumming", or to stalk drug dealers and drink the blood of drug-addicted humans. But something goes wrong, and there is another vampire girl there, a New Blood named Cally Monture who is there to roll the Drug Dealers for their money so that her mother can pay the rent. But when many of the Drug Dealers turn out to be Vampire Hunters known as Van Helsings, both sets of vampires have to fight if they want to live... a circumstance in which Cally's powers over the weather stand in good stead.

But the fight leads to the death of Tanith Graves, Lilith's best friend, and Cally inadvertantly saves the life of one of the Van Helsings, Peter, without knowing who he is. Peter is discovered too soon to try and destroy Cally, and feels a bit of a debt to her because she saved his life. So when his father tells him that Cally's grandmother was a white witch and that Cally could choose not to be a vampire, Peter determines to try and save her from the Vampire life. But his father and the rest of his family will not help him, for they consider her lost after leading the life of a Vampire.

Cally returns home, and is told by her mother that her father, whom she has never met, was impressed with her recent grades from Varney Academy, and he has decided to send her to the exclusive Bathory Academy, a stronghold of the Old Bloods, where her recent nemesis, Lilith Todd, also goes to school.

Cally reluctantly agrees to go, knowing she will be snubbed by all the Old Bloods who attend the school. And she is snubbed and cut dead by Lilith and her friends, but Cally finds her own friends by sticking up for herself against Lilith's abuse, and several of the teachers support her as well. But when Jules De Laval, Lilith's fiancee, starts paying Cally the attention the insecure Lilith feels should be better spent with her, it's war! But when Lilith bites Cally, she discovers a horrible secret that could just bring her entire world as Daddy's Little Girl crashing down around her. Can she survive the shock... and her own insecurity?

I liked this series, which has definite ties to the real world. Lilith seems to inhabit the world of the very rich upper-crust, where the rich, the famous and the rich and famous hobnob and act like best friends until the knives come out and the backstabbing starts. She's not a particularly likeable person, for all the attempts to humanize her by giving her the weakness of insecurity. She's shallow and arrogant, assured of her high place from the status and wealth of her vampire family. She treats the people around her cruelly and yet whines and cries at the prospect of her father taking away her credit cards.

Cally is a bit better as a character, but she has her own problems. Coming from a family chronically short of money (which isn't a problem for her unseen father), she steals from drug dealers and questionable types to support her mother, who has no self-control when it comes to money. Her mother seems to do nothing but sit around and watch her flat-screen television all day and occasionally try to mother her daughter. Cally deliberately cultivates a more "street" than expensive bitch image, but she does try to fit into her new school and treats the girls there better than Lilith does.

It was interesting to watch Cally clash with Lilith and get praise from her teachers, and finally make some friends of her own among the Old Bloods and Half Breeds of the school. There will be a sequel out soon, and I have my suspicions about where some of the storyline may be heading. It will be very interesting to find out if my suspicions are confirmed.

The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

Anna Wren is a widow whose husband was unfaithful to her, and she still bears the uncertainty and lingering hurt inherent in that situation. But being widowed also meant a slow slide into poverty and extremely pinched circumstances. Luckily, her husband's mother stays in the house with her as a cook/housekeeper, and a girl named Fanny who is distantly related to Mrs. Wren acts as a girl of all tasks, but neither are very good at being servants.

Anna sees only one thing for it, and that is to become a servant herself, a governess or companion, seeing as she understands Latin and Greek (having been taught by her father), as well as how to write and do sums. But her talents are not suited to either job, until she runs into Hopple, the servant of the Earl of Swartingham, Edward de Raaf, who had nearly run Anna down in the road. The earl needs a secretary, but his ferocious temper has driven off all his former secretaries. Anna dazzles Hopple into offering the job, and the Earl, satisfied with Hopple saying he had engaged a secretary, goes off to London for a week to take care of business.

Anna works for the week, and makes the acqaintance of the Earl's nameless dog, who started following him after he freed and fed it once. When the Earl returns home, he is thunderstruck to discover his new secretary is female, but can't argue with her work, which is impeccable. But best of all, she isn't upset or given the vapors when he raises his voice to her or argues with her, and she's intelligent enough to follow along and ask questions about his agricultural research.

She soon begins to appreciate his finer qualities, and becomes quite attracted to him. But when she runs out of paper and finds a bill for a whorehouse named Aphrodite's grotto, she becomes upset to think of him loving another woman. Around this time, she finds a prostitute in a ditch on her way home from her job. The earl has lent her his carriage to ride in, and she persuades the groom to help the woman, even though it is clear that she is of fallen virtue. Doing so, however, makes her an outcast with some in the village, but she refuses to send the woman away to the local workhouse to be nursed and instead tends this woman, Pearl, with her own hands and in her own bed, even sending a message to her sister, Coral.

But opening her husband's writing box, she finds a locket jammed in there. She starts to throw it out, hating any reminder of him and his infidelity, but eventually decides to keep it, thinking that she needs to stop being tortured by reminders of him. But when the wife of the local squire, Felicity, sees the locket, she thinks that Anna knows the truth about Felicity and Anna's former husband, and their adulterous affair. Thinking that Anna means to blackmail her, she arranges to have Anna followed and her own secrets discovered so that she may do to Anna before Anna does to her.

Anna doesn't have any secrets, except burgeoning feelings for Edward, but when Edward leaves for London again, Anna doesn't want Edward going to a lady of loose virtue to relieve his sexual frustrations. She wants him for herself! So she asks Pearl's sister to get her into Aphrodite's Grotto as the woman who is waiting for the Earl of Swartingham, and Coral agrees, bringing her to London and arranging things for her so that she can spend several nights with the man she has come to love. But even though things go successfully for her, it doesn't make her happy, for she knows that the Earl is affianced to someone else.

But Felicity's spy manages to discover what Anna has done in the city, and Felicity uses it to keep Anna in line. She intimates to Edward about his assignation with someone they both know, and Felicity's friend starts to share his story about Anna, but the Earl leaps to her defense without hearing it and demands she be apologized to, on the threat of a beating delivered by the Earl.

But when the Earl discovers the truth about her little exploit, he feels used, and wonders if Anna does this with other men or if she did it because of his smallpox scars, which he feels make him ugly because his first wife said she couldn't stand looking at them before she died giving birth to his stillborn son. Then, when he realizes she did it out of her feelings for him, he is determined to marry her, but she feels she cannot take him from his fianceé.

But Felicity is still after Anna in an attempt to blackmail her former lover's widow into keeping silent about her adultery, and she has too many other lovers who want to further her aims. Can Edward keep Anna safe and win her heart, or has Anna been too damaged by her former husband's infidelity to ever be won?

I liked this book immensely, which contrasts Anna and Edward's story with that of the titular fairytale, the Raven Prince, a Beauty and the Beast-type story in which the heroine loses her love by her suspicion and the collusion of her beautiful but heartless sisters and must prove her constancy by tracking down her husband with the help of the four winds. The lyricism of the tale contrasts with the more realistic tone of the story about Edward and Anna, and yet echoes many of the same themes. And in the end, both stories end happily.

Anna comes off as a thoroughly modern heroine, with advanced ideas about a woman's place in society and shows this through her helping of Pearl, the prostitute, who she treats as she would any other respectable woman; a most unusual attitude for her time. And of course, she does it with no expectations of repayment despite the fact that she has little to begin with.

Edward de Raaf, though, is more than a match for her, though his attitudes are more in keeping with the time he is born to than Anna's are. Even though he has been married before, his uncertainty about his appearance due to some minor smallpox scars makes him less open to entering a romance than Anna, as he believes no woman would find him attractive.

I must confess to one thing I find far-fetched at the end of the story. That Anna, who believed herself to be barren, is with child (again) after five years of marriage. Why is it romance heroines only seem to get preganant with their one true love, when in the story they have usually been married before and now think themselves barren. I did think she would get pregnant after her little adventure in Aphrodite's Grotto, and I suspected the author was thinking of it. It just smacks of fantasy and wish fulfillment, and it offends my sense of an orderly world where a woman can have sex with a man she doesn't even like and become pregnant. It's like, fantasy contraception.

In any case, I will read future volumes in the series, if more come out. I really liked the characters, the series and the story, even part of it did annoy me. Thankfully, it was pushed to the epilogue instead of being a large part of the story itself. I would definitely recommend this book to someone else.

The Knight of the Red Beard by Andre Norton and Sasha Miller

The Knight of the Red Beard is the fifth book in the cycle of Oak, Yew, Ash and Rowan. Several years have passed since the defeat of the Mother Flame Dragon and her brood, and now Ashen and Gaurin's children are coming into their own.

With the Nordorn Kingdom prosperous and at peace with Ashen and Gaurin, known as "Their Maimed Majesties" at the helm, their eldest son and heir, Bjaudin, keeps an eye on his studies and looks to woo a bride. Middle child and only daughter Elin has plans for herself that involves her becoming heir to the Dowager Ysa, and applies all her intelligence and cunning into gaining Ysa's favor. Youngest son Mikkel, bored with the infighting between Bjaudin and Elin, dreams of somehow escaping their endless bickering and becoming a man on his own terms.

And when his uncle Rowance decides to finally marry his leman Mauritja, he sees his chance. His close friend, Tjórvi, is the son of the head of the Sea-Rovers, and they have a tradition of running away to sea when they feel they are old enough. Nordorn's newest ship, The Ice Princess, will soon be going for sea trials, and another ship, the GorGull, will be going a-raiding. Tjórvi plans on stowing away on the GorGull and becoming a man. It would be simple for Mikkel to come with him.

And so they do. But their stowing away has some far-reaching effects. For one, the boys are introduced to the actual hard work that comes in the sailing of a ship. For another, when a Wykenig force attacks the GorGull, Mikkel is captured in the raid, while Tjórval manages to escape, mainly because the captain of the Wykenig vessel, Holger der Forferdelig (or Holger the Terrible) sees that he has a trained warkat accompanying him, named Talkin. He wants the boy because someone able to train a Warkat at such a young age is special, so he sends Mikkel back to his steading and turns him into a servant there.

Meanwhile, back at court, Elin falls under Ysa's tutelage and practices her skills at entwining young men around her finger by playing with several noble's sons, nearly bringing them to blows as they fight for her favors. At the same time, Ysa pushes for Elin's betrothal to the boy she wants to marry and achieves it while at the same time stirring up unrest against Ashen and Gaurin in their kingdom with rumors that they sit on a huge cache of firestones while letting their kingdom lack for money.

Bjaudin also finds a girl to marry at this time, and is betrothed to her in the same ceremony that betroths Elin to her own choice. Back at the Steading, Mikkel falls under the authority of Askepott, a wysen wyf the same as Madame Zazar back in Nordorn Kingdom. She looks after Mikkel and begins corresponding with Zazar, sharing herbs and a ritual that will allow them to meet. But when Mikkel runs afoul of Holger's wife, Gunnora, by taking up too much of his time for her liking, she turns foul magic on the boy, causing him to age at an accelerated rate and to forget who he really is, thinking Holger his father.

But when the time comes to release his warkat Talkin to seek a mate, one of his fellow prisoners, Petra, asks to accompany him. He lets her, and she convinces him to take off her iron collar of servitude. When he does so, she seems to grow taller immediately, and she reveals she is a rock-maiden, literally made out of living rock, like marble. She takes him to the city of the rock-maidens and wants to help him get revenge on Holger for imprisoning them both.

When Holger realizes that Mikkel is gone, he blames Askepott, and she leaves for Nordorn lands after taking all her herbs and things with her, and steals a magic sled to make the trip in the bargain. Once there, she works with Zazar and Ysa to try and find Mikkel. But as they seek him, Ysa's meddling comes back to harm both Ashen and Gaurin as they try to deal with Gunnora, the daughter of the sorceress who raised the mother ice-dragon. Now that her mother is dead, Gunnora means to have her revenge on their Maimed Majesties, and their kingdom. But can they prevent her rage from falling on them all?

I rather liked this series, but as an ending and supposedly the final volume in the cycle of Oak, Ash, Yew and Rowan, it felt curiously unfinished. At the end, Gunnora is still alive and Mikkel's fate is in limbo. With the aging spell on him halted, he's effectively immortal, but no longer remembers his old friends, his parents or his siblings. And for all that he's an adult in body, in his mind he is still very much a child, in love with Petra but not really understanding what love between a grown man and woman is.

Holger, too, is still alive and free at the end. In fact, none of the people who cause trouble in the novel are in any way conclusively dealt with. Ysa, Elin, Gunnora and Holger are all alive and free, and even if Elin now dislikes Ysa because Ysa's meddling caused the death of both her parents, Ysa suffers no real punishment for this act. In short, this volume calls out for another, one that brings a real ending to the threat of Holger and Gunnora, one that this book just didn't have.

Being that Andre Norton passed away a few years ago, it's entirely possible that this book was cobbled together out of some preliminary planning by Norton and co-writer Miller. In the end, though, it disappoints as far as being a satisfying story goes. I'm glad I read it, but it isn't really an Andre Norton story, in my mind. It just doesn't have her authentic touch, and while I might purchase the book to be a completist, I wouldn't read it again, even as part of the series.