Friday, July 21, 2006

Quickies

Fire in the Mist by Holly Lisle. A young shepherdess turns out to have extreme magical talent and ends up fighting a 400 year old evil menace. Okay, I guess, although you tend to expect her to get into trouble with her attitude and nothing terribly bad ever happens to her. There are two more books that I haven't read since they aren't in any of the libraries around here (this one is readable online.)

Mairelon the Magician and Magician's Ward by Patricia C. Wrede. Two kind of cliched semi-historical fantasies. The most interesting part is the history, probably. The ending of Magician's Ward is obvious almost from the beginning, what with the forced romance.

Take a Thief by Mercedes Lackey. A young boy (11 or 12) ends up surviving on the streets as a thief, mentored along with a gang of other boys by an old soldier until the tenement where they live burns down and the boy decides to get revenge. He winds up stealing what he thinks is an ordinary horse and ends up as one of the queen's (magical) heralds. I started this last night and didn't really want to finish it this morning because it seemed too commonplace, not to mention the little quirks of Oddly Capitalized language getting on my nerves. It might have seemed a little bit more serious if the author wasn't so free with her capitals. A sort of cute story, I guess, although really it's effect is to make me want to find out more about the world of Valdemar (there seem to be 15 or 20 books set in this world), and more especially wonder how the system of heralds and companions got set up. Things like this should have a story behind them, right? There also wasn't much detail about the sorts of magical gifts that people might have.

The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint. An interesting little Newford tale. It isn't just the cover artist, Imogene really does turn blue about halfway through. When her mother moves to Newford with Imogene and her brother Jared, Imogene tries to fit in at school but quickly attracts attention from the school ghost, a gang of fairies gone wrong, and some things called soul eaters. Sort of a light read, but I guess it's entertaining enough. We also see a slightly sinister side to Christy Riddell, who in the adult books seems like he can do no wrong.

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