2004 fantasy/SF, fourth of its series. Rowan the Steerswoman returns
to the port town of Donner, to try to learn more about the fallen
Guidestar and the wizard who made it fall.
Nobody else writes about things quite like this. By this point in
the series it has become fairly clear just what the wizards are, if
not quite how they became that; and how, if not why, they rule over
the rest of the population; and how, if not why, one of them has taken
steps to provoke a war for survival between the people of the
civilised lands and the barbarian Outskirters. This book partly
answers some of those questions, and raises more.
But that's not even what it's about; it's about the scientific
mindset, the spirit of enquiry, the mental flexibility to learn even
when what you're learning seems to defy common sense and practicality.
It's about kidnapping a dragon. It's about robbing a wizard's
stronghold for the really valuable thing kept there: knowledge.
And, on a brutally practical level, Rowan and Bel spend most of this
book working together again after their separation last time, which is
much more to my taste than splitting them up was; an old friend from
the first book reappears; and time is passing, and people have been
changed by events that we didn't see.
Not to mention that much of the action of the first half consists of
finding and piecing together clues to something that happened two
generations ago, the sort of practical historical research that I
enjoyed in A Talent for War and I love here.
These books may perhaps be my favourites of all the fiction I've read.
This is the last of the series to date; Kirstein got cancer and took a
while to recover. She's working on the next book, but there's no
estimated date for completion. I hope one day to read it.
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