Harriet Klausner's Review Archive
Teacher Milah-Kvo catches student Otah Machi sneaking out of the city. Otah explains he will go elsewhere as he disgraced himself in the class. Instead his teacher suggests a different safer alternative as a black robe to serve as a bodyguard to an andat and its owner. As Otah inadvertently learns about the assassination plot, Seedless works on a ploy to destroy the mind of his possessor by driving Heshai-kyo insane with grief over losing a child that the andat plans to remove prematurely from the womb of the sorcerer’s beloved.
This is a terrific opening fantasy that uses two major fabulous subplots in which either could have serves as the plot, but instead brilliantly tie together to establish a strange magical world that seems plausible and real. The tale is action-packed, but it is the cast that makes everything seem plausible and exciting. Fans of deep sagas will want to read book one of the Long Price Quartet, A SHADOW IN SUMMER, as this will be on everyone’s short list for great genre 2006 novels.