2022 fantasy, linked to the Uncertain Sanctuary series. Zelia Ptishva
is a World Walker, one of the people who link the worlds of Reality
together; she's rushing with a valuable crystal back to the World
Walker Synod. When she runs into a chaos storm, she takes shelter in a
sorcerer's inter-world House… which would be worrying enough without
her secretly being a sorcerer herself.
The House, having lost its own sorcerer, wants to be adopted. Its
inhabitant, trapped by that sorcerer, wants to die. Zelia just wants
to get back to the world-walkers' headquarters of Kaikan. All of these
goals are going to get a bit compromised.
All right, there are some recurring themes in those of Schwartz's
books I have read: the correct use of power that few other people
have, a heroine with some kind of unusual ability, a hero who's a
damaged warrior. (Shades of Michelle Diener's Class 5 series.) But I
am still enjoying them; and while Zelia will of course end up having
her sorcerous power revealed, that doesn't mean the path to get there
will be predictable. Indeed, a surprising amount of this book deals
with the politics of how the crystal will be used: to help lift a
world out of dictatorship by connecting it to wider society, as
Zelia's political best friend promised but now seems strangely
uninterested in actually doing, or for something else? And if so,
what?
Perhaps Zelia is a little slow to suspect her best friend of vaunting
ambition, but they have been good friends for years. When she does
decide she has to act, she does it effectively and efficiently, and
making use of her allies rather than trying to manage everything
herself.
It's not brilliant, and if you already haven't got on with Schwartz
this won't change your mind, but I enjoyed reading it even so.