King's Dragon
(Crown of Stars series, Volume 1)
Kate Elliot
DAW
Fiction, Fantasy
****
DESCRIPTION: The kingdom of Wendar, a land with magical history and interesting neighbors, is on the verge of civil war. Though King Henry holds the crown, his sister
Sabella challenges his claim. The king has a son, Sanglant, by a woman who was possibly not human. This is but one point of controversy; will an inhuman bastard child ever be
able to take the crown? For now, Sanglant serves with the elite armed unit called the King’s Dragons, while the matter of his fitness to assume his father's crown is contested.
As a Dragon, he has more pressing matters to distract him. The reptilian Eika of the north are invading with unusual ferocity, just one of a number of ill-omened events which
hint that the civil war is only part of far greater struggles to come. As usual, the King's Dragons are on the front lines - with Sanglant leading the charge.
Alain, a boy of unknown parentage who was promised to the church at birth, has his life changed when the sacred Lady of Battles appears to him in a vision. Still devout, Alain
has no choice but to follow the Lady’s calling on a path that may lead to his hidden ancestry.
Liath is the daughter of a priest-astronomer, who is on the run from enemies he dares not tell even her about. When these enemies catch up to him, she is left without a past or a
future. Circumstances lead her to the dungeon for her late father’s debts, the bed of a corrupt priest who buys her out of jail, and at last into the saddle as one of the King’s
Eagles, a special team of messengers and agents working for the crown of Wendar. Her latent displays of a rare and potent kind of magic are both a help and a hindrance as she
struggles to find a place in the world, while guarding the last secrets left by her father from the unknown enemies that still pursue her.
REVIEW: I was initially skeptical of this book, but I finally got into the universe. Some fantasy books are set in worlds that I just don’t "click" with, but I found that I actually was getting the feel of this world. I had thought the kingdom's strong religious influences might get sickening, as I am most certainly not a deeply religious person, but the kingdom's worship was different enough from Christianity to be interesting. With saints appearing, real-life miracles and such, it had more fantasy elements than I expected. Unlike many religion-dominated worlds, ladies were given pretty much equal rights as the kingdom's landowners. The term "separate but equal" applies to the world's arrangements of power distribution, with both sexes being discomfited when the other tries to cross gender lines. Slightly different characters and good descriptions carried me through when place names and histories pile up too thick. There were also some nice twists in the tale that I didn't see coming. I have the second volume, Prince of Dogs, sitting in my reading backlog; I really need to work my way down to it someday..
You might also enjoy:
The Sword of Shannara (Terry Brooks, Fiction - A simple country boy may be the only one who can save the land from a great evil)
The Vlad Taltos series (Stephen Brust, Fiction - A finely crafted world serves as the backdrop for stories of a clever assassin and his dragonlike familiar)
Pawn of Prophecy (David Eddings, Fiction - A farmboy's birthmark hints at an epic destiny)
Magician: Apprentice (Raymond E. Feist, Fiction - An orphan boy in a frontier castle faces otherworldly armies)
The Sword of Truth series (Terry Goodkind, Fiction - A cranky wizard, a woodland guide, and a mysterious woman face terrible dark forces)
Any of Elizabeth Haydon's works (Elizabeth Haydon, YA Fiction and Fiction - Epic fantasy and adventure in a well-realized fantasy world)
Dune (Frank Herbert, Fiction - The interstellar human civilization relies on life-extending spice from the desert world Arrakis)
Any of Robin Hobb's fantasy series (Robin Hobb, Fiction - Well-crafted fantasy tales in well-crafted worlds)
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (Diana Wynne Jones, Fiction - A humorous tour guide to epic fantasy worlds)
The Wheel of Time series (Robert Jordan, Fiction - Evil awakes and threatens a peaceful realm)
A Song of Ice and Fire series (George R. R. Martin, Fiction - World-spanning epic tale of wars and kings, good and evil, and a few dragons for good measure)
The Tortall quartets (Tamora Pierce, YA Fiction - Tales of adventure in a magical world)
The Kingkiller Chronicle (Patrick Rothfuss, Fiction - A living legend, now hiding behind a pseudonym as a quiet innkeeper, relates the story of a young life gone wrong)
Eragon (Christopher Paolini, Fiction - A farmer boy who finds a dragon's egg finds his life and his world turned upside-down)
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (J. R. R. Tolkien, Fiction - The classic epic tale of Hobbits, Elves, Men, Dwarves, wizards, and Middle-Earth)
The Death Gate Cycle (Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Fiction - An epic fantasy spanning seven worlds)
The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy (Tad Williams, Fiction - The magical land of Osten Ard faces an ancient evil)
The Shadowmarch series (Tad Williams, Fiction - The Eddon twins, Prince Barrick and Princess Briony, stand between the threat of faerie Qar to the north and the brutal god-king Autarch to the south)
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Cold Magic
(The Spiritwalker trilogy, Book 1)
Kate Elliot
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
**+
DESCRIPTION: Catherine, a girl on the brink of womanhood, lives in a rapidly changing world. Machinery and science are slowly dominating the old ways of
gods and magic. The voiceless masses grow restless under the yoke of numerous princes and the powerful mage Houses. Cat and her cousin Beatrice even attend an academy
like boys do, learning of new contraptions such as floating airships that will revolutionize the world as they know it. Even children of the much-maligned Kena'ani
(erroneously branded Phoenicians by the lying tongues of Roman scholars), widely considered unscrupulous spies and double-dealers, might find their fortunes raised.
But worlds do not change easily, nor do the old ways yield easily to the new... especially when there is much more than ignorance and superstition behind their
power.
Cat is wakened to this truth most unexpectedly when a cold mage - a much-resented breed of magic worker, in whose presence flames extinguish and machinery snarls -
turns up on the doorstep. By claim of magic contracts of which she knows nothing, the arrogant man rips her from everything she has known, everything she had thought
she might become. Even as she despairs, she learns that far greater forces are at work. In a world where magic and science cannot coexist, where war seems inevitable,
Cat must learn fast if she is to land on her feet... and choose a side.
REVIEW: Alternate worlds like this one - a re-imagined Industrial Revolution-era Earth, where Celtic princes rise in the wake of a shrinking Roman empire,
where feathered-reptile "trolls" from across the ocean introduce dangerous, radical ideas to the populace, where northern mages use their powers as much to enforce
their own tyranny as to protect the public - can be a treat to visit. I enjoy a well-thought-out new world to explore. That doesn't mean, unfortunately, that I will
accept page after page after page of endless worldbuilding, tracing histories and lineages and ethnic migrations and so forth, set against a smothering backdrop of
geography lessons, in lieu of a story. The author even repeats several stories and history lessons, I suppose on the assumption that I was too stupid to remember them
the first time. In between lectures, I had to endure a heroine I didn't enjoy and a slew of largely heartless (or seemingly heartless) and manipulative supporting
characters on a journey that moved in agonizing fits and starts, careening from plot-stopping "story time" to breathless escapes from enemy clutches. Strong whiffs of
politics grew into a choking stench by the end of the book, which - being the first book in a stated trilogy - didn't resolve much. Instead of eagerly awaiting the
second installment, I merely felt a sense of relief that I'd finally finished the thing.
I give Kate Elliot marks for depth of research in planning her alternate Earth. Unfortunately, the tidal waves of research drowned the story, and her characters'
unlikable and annoying traits overwhelmed their commendable ones. I have no interest in following this trilogy any further.
You might also enjoy:
The Fire Rose (Mercedes Lackey, Fiction - A brilliant but broke lady scholar in turn-of-the-century America helps a disfigured, arrogant California rail baron who happens to be a powerful mage)
The Song of Ice and Fire series (George R. R. Martin, Fiction - A sweeping fantasy saga set in an intricately crafted world on the brink of a years-long winter)
Devil's Tower and Devil's Engine (Mark Sumner, Fiction - Westward expansion of America ends abruptly during the Civil War when magic reawakens across the land)
Boneshaker (Cherie Priest, YA Fiction - Deadly blight gas turns a steampunk 19th-century Seattle into a ghost town full of zombies)
The Leviathan trilogy (Scott Westerfield, YA Fiction - An alternate World War 1 pits German "Clanker" machinery against the fabricated animals of the Allied "Darwinists")
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