"The Noble Dead Saga - Series Two"

In series one staring Magiere and Leesil, Magiere a Dhampir, is a child born of a living mother and a vampire father. Leesil, her companion and later lover and husband, is half human and half Elf. Together with a half Fae, half dog named Chap, they are joined by Wynn Hygeorht - a sage on her first journey to find history, written or oral, of the people of the lands.

The first series ends with them finding one of the "Nobel Undead" living in an Ice Castle in the frozen waste lands. Within is the forgotten history and Wynn takes all she can carry of the scrolls stored there. Magiere and Leesil obtain an orb that must be hidden and kept safe. They all make it back to home base and Wynn is sent back to Calm Seatt, home of the Guild of Sagecraft, bearing the texts written by vampires in vampire blood.

The first book in this new series has Wynn being treated like she is delusional by her superiors and they seize both the texts and her personal journals. Wynn is kept from reading any of the translations or even seeing them. Then Wynn finds out that without her permission they have been sending the texts out to scriptoriums for copying. Now several of the sages sent to pickup the copies are killed and the copies are now missing.

Wynn teams up with and old enemy/friend Chane, who is one of Nobel Undead, to stop the killings and to have her property returned.

The writings of Barb & J.C. Hendee are very detailed and involved - and worth every minute you spend perusing the pages of these excellent novels. I can't wait to see what is in store for Wynn in the next book of The Noble Dead!

Reviewed by Judith Saul
Posted July 18, 2009

Summary

The national bestselling Noble Dead saga is "one of those [series] for which the term dark fantasy was definitely intended" (Chronicle).

After her adventures with Magiere and Leesil, Wynn Hygeorht has returned to the Guild of Sagecraft, bearing texts supposedly penned by vampires from the time of the Forgotten History and the Great War. Seized by the Guild's scholars and sent out for copying without Wynn's consent, several pages disappear—and the two sages charged with conveying these pages are murdered. Suspicious of the Guild, separated from the only friends she fully trusts, and convinced the Noble Dead are responsible for the killings, Wynn embarks on a quest to uncover the secrets of the texts.