Read Recently -- March -- Juvenalia
Masques by Patricia Briggs
This was Briggs' first published novel, apparently a non-seller from a small press that has been long out of print, and at long last revised and republished, now that there is a market of people like me who will buy just about anything with her name on it.
Like a lot of Briggs' early stuff, it's not urban fantasy but low fantasy, and set in the same world as a lot of them: When Demons Walk, for example (and that seems to be the only one I have reviewed). Like the heroine of that story, our heroine here is a spy for the mercenary nation of Sianim. There, the resemblance stops.
Aralorn (who is not a Ranger, no matter what you say) is a shapeshifter, sorceress, and spy (not necessarily in that order). Shapeshifting and sorcery, at least certain kinds of it, seem to go together: all shapeshifters seem to be "green" or nature mages, while those using "human magic" cannot change shape.
When we first meet her, in the prologue (did any good book ever start with a prologue?), she is scouting for a Sianimese training force. She encounters a wolf that has fallen into an old pit trap. Unbeknownst to her (but beknownst to us), this is a wizard disguised as a wolf, who is running away from a powerful enemy. She rescues him from the pit anyway, and takes him with her.
The next time we see her, in chapter one, it is four years later and she is spying on the local archmage, also known as "the ae'Magi", alternately and for no good reason that I can see (it's even used as his last name "Geoffrey ae'Magi"). Ole Geoff (as I call him) is a much beloved figure locally, the most powerful wizard since the wizard wars, and a complete, black-hearted SOB who sacrifices kids to gain magic power. However, he's so beloved that no one would believe Aralorn should she try to tell them he's a murderer, let alone that he seems to have cast a spell over every country in the area (to make them love him). The only person who seems likely to believe her (other than Wolf, as she now calls the Wolf (and he talks, at least to her)) is Prince--sorry, King--Myr of Reth, who, when she meets him in the Ae'Magi's palace sees through the illusion Ole Geoff has cast on her. It seems that Myr is immune to magic, which is useful since Ole Geoff intends to frame him for murder (Geoff has been building up to this: Myr's parents died in an accident after leaving Ole Geoff's palace a little while ago).
At the time Myr is framed, Aralorn is out in the hinterlands on what is clearly a bullshit assignment, spying on nobody in the middle of nowhere. She decides to, as it were, light out for the territories and join up with Myr to oppose the ae'Magi. She stumbles across him by accident, and finds that he is accompanied by, among others, a mysterious robed and masked wizard whose voice she recognizes: it's Wolf, finally in his human form.
You can probably imagine how it goes from there, though you might not predict some appearances and you might over-estimate how useful some characters will turn out to be. You might also, as I was, be puzzled by the decision to call what are plainly flesh-eating zombies by the biblical proper name, "Uriah"--it sounds oddly out of place.
But, really, there's little here you haven't seen before, and what you do see seems oddly familiar even when it tries to be original (see, for example, Uriah). Briggs does her usual job with the characters (make of that what you will), but really--this is juvenalia and it shows, even with the revisions. Mildly not recommended -- only for Briggs completists.
After that, you would expect that I wouldn't pick up the sequel. But, it was already out, and it's by Briggs, so I grabbed it. We'll see if it's any better in a few weeks.
This was Briggs' first published novel, apparently a non-seller from a small press that has been long out of print, and at long last revised and republished, now that there is a market of people like me who will buy just about anything with her name on it.
Like a lot of Briggs' early stuff, it's not urban fantasy but low fantasy, and set in the same world as a lot of them: When Demons Walk, for example (and that seems to be the only one I have reviewed). Like the heroine of that story, our heroine here is a spy for the mercenary nation of Sianim. There, the resemblance stops.
Aralorn (who is not a Ranger, no matter what you say) is a shapeshifter, sorceress, and spy (not necessarily in that order). Shapeshifting and sorcery, at least certain kinds of it, seem to go together: all shapeshifters seem to be "green" or nature mages, while those using "human magic" cannot change shape.
When we first meet her, in the prologue (did any good book ever start with a prologue?), she is scouting for a Sianimese training force. She encounters a wolf that has fallen into an old pit trap. Unbeknownst to her (but beknownst to us), this is a wizard disguised as a wolf, who is running away from a powerful enemy. She rescues him from the pit anyway, and takes him with her.
The next time we see her, in chapter one, it is four years later and she is spying on the local archmage, also known as "the ae'Magi", alternately and for no good reason that I can see (it's even used as his last name "Geoffrey ae'Magi"). Ole Geoff (as I call him) is a much beloved figure locally, the most powerful wizard since the wizard wars, and a complete, black-hearted SOB who sacrifices kids to gain magic power. However, he's so beloved that no one would believe Aralorn should she try to tell them he's a murderer, let alone that he seems to have cast a spell over every country in the area (to make them love him). The only person who seems likely to believe her (other than Wolf, as she now calls the Wolf (and he talks, at least to her)) is Prince--sorry, King--Myr of Reth, who, when she meets him in the Ae'Magi's palace sees through the illusion Ole Geoff has cast on her. It seems that Myr is immune to magic, which is useful since Ole Geoff intends to frame him for murder (Geoff has been building up to this: Myr's parents died in an accident after leaving Ole Geoff's palace a little while ago).
At the time Myr is framed, Aralorn is out in the hinterlands on what is clearly a bullshit assignment, spying on nobody in the middle of nowhere. She decides to, as it were, light out for the territories and join up with Myr to oppose the ae'Magi. She stumbles across him by accident, and finds that he is accompanied by, among others, a mysterious robed and masked wizard whose voice she recognizes: it's Wolf, finally in his human form.
You can probably imagine how it goes from there, though you might not predict some appearances and you might over-estimate how useful some characters will turn out to be. You might also, as I was, be puzzled by the decision to call what are plainly flesh-eating zombies by the biblical proper name, "Uriah"--it sounds oddly out of place.
But, really, there's little here you haven't seen before, and what you do see seems oddly familiar even when it tries to be original (see, for example, Uriah). Briggs does her usual job with the characters (make of that what you will), but really--this is juvenalia and it shows, even with the revisions. Mildly not recommended -- only for Briggs completists.
After that, you would expect that I wouldn't pick up the sequel. But, it was already out, and it's by Briggs, so I grabbed it. We'll see if it's any better in a few weeks.