It has taken a while to get here, and there's been a lot of painstaking world-building along the way, but Juliet McKenna's five-book series pays dividends with this final volume. Everything that has been set up so far comes back into play - and there's not a false note to be heard as every single...
http://nhw.livejournal.com/169290.html[return][return]This is a bit different from its three predecessors in the Einarinn series, with battles on the high seas against strangely magical opponents replaced by a political drama, set in the capital city and watching the machinations of the great hou...
The Thief's Gamble is a great traditional fantasy, of the kind that made me fall in love with the genre when I was fourteen years old. Which shouldn't have been a big surprise as the book was actually first published in 1999, which was in the same decade as when I first discovered fantasy. It's e...
Having read and loved McKenna's first book, The Thief's Gambit, last November, I really wanted to get back to the Tales of Einarinn and to find out what happens next. So during my Christmas book spree I made sure to get my hands on The Swordsman’s Oath. I loved returning to the world of Einarin...
(Repost from http://drying-ink.blogspot.com/2010/0... ) Juliet E. McKenna's Tales of Einarinn is a series I've been reading earlier, with - mostly - a lot of enjoyment. The Gambler's Fortune is the third book in the series, and one more returns to Livak, an itinerant gambler and trickster, now ai...
But all the gowns and furbelows adorning our ladies must be paid for with solid coin this year, now merchants have Imperial sanction to refuse open-ended credit to even the noblest of Houses. Well, Tadriol’s strictures may be unpopular with giddy girls obsessed with fashionable competition and Es...
Tathrin couldn't really compare it to Sharlac. He'd barely seen anything beyond the panic, smoke and slaughter engulfing the castle there. They were riding down the Inchra Road. Ahead, Parnilesse Town's walls were formidably high and Duke Orlin had plainly forbidden so much as a pigsty to be buil...
The trick is identifying the ones which will make a novel and those better suited to a shorter piece of fiction. I tuck those away for the occasions when I'm invited to submit a story to an anthology or magazine. When The Solaris Book of New Fantasy was proposed, I saw my chance to create a bad w...
“Guinalle?” He sat bolt upright, then cursed as he slid off the makeshift bed a sailor had lashed together. He hit the ground with a thump that jarred his spine.“No, it’s me, Larissa.”“ ’Sar?” Hearing voices, Halice came towards the frond-covered canopies she’d ordered built to shade each bed fro...
She felt they both hesitated on a threshold far more perilous than this entrance to the manor’s shrine.She closed the door from the great hall’s dais behind her. ‘What are you doing?’‘Who told you I was here?’ Ilysh laid a garland of leafy green stems and bright blue flowers on the pedestal befor...
She smiled graciously, nodding with approval at the taproom. ‘My thanks for making us so welcome.’ The tables were draped with white linen and every chair and bench gleamed with diligent polishing. There wasn’t a speck of dust on the floor or a wisp of cobweb amid the rafters. The fire crackling ...
It was a strange dream, though; something felt not quite right about the city, but as I opened my eyes the thought evaporated. I smiled as I shaved at an elegant marble washstand; my father would certainly be impressed with the quality of Relshazri stonecutting, for all that the city was largely ...
Raven flew into the wood, And looked among the laughing trees, They hid their lore beneath their leaves Where no one looks, so no one sees. Raven flew into the peaks, And dug among the icy snows, But wisdom lay beyond his reach, Buried right beneath his nose. Raven flew back to the plains Came cr...
Appalling though we may find the folly and ambition of the mages Mercel and Frelt, the claims of the Lords of Peorle and Algeral that they had in fact been ensorcelled can be nothing but lies. Worse, the Elected of Col seized upon this pathetic excuse, purporting to discover their involvement had...