"Excellent fantasy with a romance subplot"
This is a fantasy with a good romance subplot. Kyra, a
young wizard-in-training (in a land where wizards are
viewed with distrust, restricted by law, forbidden to marry
or own property, and frequently executed) returns to her
family home for her younger sister's wedding. Her father
threw her out six years ago when she wouldn't give up her
wizardry, and he isn't happy to see her again. She can't
tell anyone that the reason she came back is because she
had a vision that her sister would die on her wedding
night. So even though using magic to interfere in events is
forbidden, she keeps doing little magics to postpone the
wedding while she searches for the source of the curse on
her sister. The bishop falls and breaks his ankle, the
church gets infested by millions of mice, the next church
gets flooded by broken pipes, and so on. (Even though some
funny things happen, the story is by no means a comedy.) Meanwhile, the younger sister is miserable because she is
secretly in love with the pastry chef -- need I explain
that this is a land where women have little say in their
lives and marriages are arranged as partnerships between
families. And the groom isn't so eager either, doesn't have
anything in common with his bride-to-be, but finds his
wizardly future sister-in-law very interesting . . . He
turns out to be smarter and more understanding than Kyra
anticipates, once she's forced to involve him in trying to
save her sister. Underlying it all are flashbacks to Kyra's first teacher in
wizardry -- whom she helped convict of misuse of power, and
whom she watched burned at the stake. But was he really
guilty of what Kyra accused him of? There is a lot of
thought put into the ethics of the use of magic. In
this "world", magic is like physics, you can move or change
things, but not create something from nothing. (If you
magically make it rain to end the drought, you had to bring
those rainclouds from somewhere else -- and maybe they
needed that water as much as you.) Kyra is trying to save
her sister, but how does that affect other people? I enjoyed the whole story -- it made me think and it made
me feel. The ending is like real life: not everything is
tied up or perfectly resolved and the main characters are
going to have some rough times on the paths they've chosen,
but the potential is there for them to get what they want
from life. (Although this story takes place in the same "world" as
Hambly's Windrose Chronicles, it is not part of that
trilogy.) Raelene Gorlinsky / July, 1999
Copyright © 2000 for PNR Reviews
Reviewed by Raelene Gorlinsky
Posted February 3, 2002
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