Freda Warrington

I read the 'Blackbird' quartet by this author some years ago and gave away the books, so I liked them but not enough to keep. Therefore, I was surprised to discover when I began to read this, that it is a spinoff from that series, featuring some of the same characters. That isn't too much of a drawback if you haven't read them or, like me, don't remember what happened, as it does read more or less as a standalone story, although there is a reference in the first chapter and a few other places to the backstory which brought Ashurek and his sorceress wife Silvren to the dimension called Ikonus where they now live.

Ashurek is bored and frustrated, partly it seems because he made a vow not to fight any more after the events of the earlier books, and he isn't a sorceror so has no place at the School where his wife works. Messing about with some sorcerous stones, he accidentally opens a 'Way', a gateway to another dimension. This careless action could have endangered their world, so he is sentenced by the High Master and council to go through the Way and investigate the world on the other side, which they have gathered is called Jhensit. It also appears that the Way opened so easily for Ashurek because it is somehow already linked to Ikonus. The situation is complicated by the fact that Ashurek and the High Master Gregardreos have a mutual antipathy, due to Gregardreos' unrequited love for Silvren, which she is unaware of but which Ashurek knows about.

Ashurek's mission is to observe Jhensit and come back with information about it, not to get involved in its problems. But things go wrong with Gregardreos reopens the Way to send him through, and it expands to swallow up not only Ashurek but himself and Silvren. Initially, Ashurek finds himself in a ruined world where he is attacked by a dangerous creature like a giant spider, but he sees Silvren through a window into another reality, and tries to reach her. When he breaks through, he ends up in Jhensit.

Jhensit is a society of two halves. After a serious flood, the ruling classes abandoned the original ground based city to build and dwell in towering sky dwellings. The two parts of the population worship different gods, and the ruling classes have gradually become more repressive and now punish the ground dwellers for their religious beliefs. (This is a theme Warrington also pursues in another of her books, Sorrow's Light.) The society, at least the sky dwelling part, has a slightly Oriental feel as in ancient China.

Ashurek is helped by a young man from the ground dwelling population, who worship the god Flaim. Despite his best intentions, he is gradually drawn into the conflict between the two parts of the population and also affected by the disintegration called the Maelstrom which is gradually destroying Jhensit and transforming its population into deadly creatures like the one that attacked him earlier.

The opening of the story reminded me of slightly clunky fanfiction but when the viewpoint switches to Shai Fea, the sister of the ruler, the story becomes a lot more interesting. Shai Fea is married to a man she doesn't love but can tolerate. She wakes up to find him mysteriously dead, another in a long list of similar fatalities. She is aghast when her brother frames her not only for this murder but the rest, and she is forced to flee with the help of her uncle. She eventually comes in to contact with Ashurek and the young man who is helping him, and her fate becomes bound up with Ashurek's. Her character is rather uneven though; sometimes she seems quite brave and independent, but other times she goes completely to pieces, and this fluctuates throughout the book.

I found the book rather uneven, with the parts concerning the repressive society more interesting than Ashurek's quest to retrieve Silvren. Eventually however, the two aspects of the story, Ashurek's thread and the subplot following Silvren and Gregardreos, do come together. It's an interesting story in places, but not a 'keeper' for me.… (mais)

A fantasy set in a divided land where the religion is used as a way to justify a rigid society based on sexual repression. The sun god repudiated his wife, the evening star, when she wouldn't obey him, and took a new wife, the earth. The evening star then became an evil hag and sent creatures called the Unseen, non human and prone to tearing human beings to pieces. These creatures took over the central part of the country and now the sun god worshippers live in the other two areas, separated by the area controlled by the evil goddess's minions. Evil thoughts can lay people open to her influence. The earth herself had to be rescued from the goddess by a hero prophet created by the sun god, who founded the religion.

At least, that is the official version. The story opens with a prologue where an aristocratic woman and her escort are travelling across the Unseen Land, from the part of the country where the king rules, to the other, more impoverished area where his younger son governs. She is supposed to marry the prince, but she and all but a few of her escort are massacred a couple of hours ride from the border. With chapter one, we switch to the viewpoint of sixteen year old Iolithe, daughter of a village ruler, en route with her parents to attend the marriage. This wasn't obvious at first as I had been left with the impression that the prologue referred to events years before. Iolithe briefly meets the prince, whom she likes, and is astounded the next day to learn that, with the death of his intended, the prince plans to marry her instead.

Iolithe soon learns that the prince is suffering from an extreme form of obsessive compulsive disorder. To begin with, he is functioning in public, but behind the bedroom door, he embarks on hours of ritual purification that he believes is necessary to ward off the goddess's influence. Iolithe tries to discuss it with him, but the need to fulfill his married duties makes him rapidly worse and he starts retaliating, eventually hitting her. When she turns to the head of the religion for help, she is told there is nothing wrong with the prince and is accused of being a disloyal wife. Even her parents, although they at least appear to believe her, wash their hands of the whole business. Iolithe then escapes to the Unseen Land, intending to cross it somehow and appeal to the prince's parents for help, but is soon caught up in a rather bewildering turn of events where time travel and shape shifting are some of the less weird things that happen to her.

I found this story rather random in the way it veers from one thing to another and is mostly unexplained apart from some vague mysticism. As might be expected, there turns out to be a different version of the central myth, where the sun god is a tyrant, the earth was their child which the goddess was protecting from him, and the prophet hero is a nasty piece of work who appears to still be around and to have been menacing Iolithe. Iolithe is all right as a character - she is independent and foolhardy, she has the best interests of the prince and their country at heart - but she does have to rely on some very convenient magic that only works for her at certain key points. Another problem I found is that many of the characters have practically unpronounceable names that continually caused me to stumble mentally while reading.… (mais)