Lora Friedanthal

Jay Lake is best known for his steampunk series of novels, and yet by weird coincidence (for I am a steampunk myself), the first book of his that I’ve read is Green, which is a standalone fantasy. I cannot judge how this novel ranks against those others.

Green seems to me to be very much a blending of two books: Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart and Karen Miller’s Empress.

I began reading this book with a question of my own: would infusing magic into a novel of manners produce a book that I would enjoy reading? Because in all honesty, although I have read Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights, I didn’t enjoy either.

Ysabel is my first Guy Gavriel Kay book. He’s one of those authors that I’ve always heard about. Maybe it’s the memorable name, I don’t know. But he was always just kind of out there as one of those authors that I knew I was supposed to read and simply hadn’t.

In case I was wondering, I guess, if he was worth the hype, Kay opens Ysabel with a 3-page prologue that was, simply, stunning.

Hekat, in Empress, is a difficult woman. And while I know that a part of me should cheer for this woman who raises herself up from a nameless no one to a ruler of her country, the other part of me can’t stand how difficult she is. Hekat is touched by the god. She is not inventing this. She really does have her deity on her side, protecting her as she slaughters the people who get in her way. Everything she does is fated. But I cannot get beyond how completely cold and ruthless she is to everyone around her.

Oh, Yelena. You crazy, headstrong, impulsive, bleeding heart, acrobatic trickster, I have missed you. I hope Ms. Synder takes it as a compliment that I have read each of her books in no more than two days. For all the work that goes into them, part of me feels that I should somehow be savoring them more. But if I did, then I wouldn’t find out what happens next as quickly as I need to.

Now this was a surprise. Here is one of those rare books not produced as a precursor to a series.

This is not to say that the land Monette and Bear have created couldn’t support multiple visits. It is merely to say that they have constructed a tale that is complete and unconcerned with possibilities and marketing strategies beyond its own ken.

Okay, okay, so Asher really is the Innocent Mage. No devastating, unexpected twists, despite the possibility. But just because Asher is the mage of prophecy, the Olken who can wield his own magic as well as Doranen magic, does not mean he has to like it. And it does not mean that he has to answer the call that prophecy has made.

The quick summary to The Innocent Mage sounds shockingly cookie-cutter. A farmer fisherman of low birth, from a rural part of Middle Earth the kingdom of Lur has a destiny. And his destiny is to save the kingdom and all its inhabitants from the Great and Looming Evil that no one knows is coming, save a chosen few who have seen the signs. How this is going to happen no one, least of all the hero, has any idea.

My initial attraction to this book was simply this: human male and mermaid female? How is that going to work? From a biological perspective, you see. Not just the scales, but, you know. How?

Poison Study was the first book in a long time that I read in a single sitting. Magic Study is the second. It was everything I wanted from a sequel.

Enraptured. I cannot remember the last time I read an entire book in one sitting. I could not, did not, put it down.

Yelena is everything you could ask for in a heroine: courageous, clever, resourceful, vulnerable, and strong. From the outset, her situation is dire. She is given a poison that will kill her if she does not return for her daily antidote. And even if she doesn’t, she may simply die from doing her job well.