Sorcerer’s Edge by David Hair

 

Review by The Mole

This book is the third and final book in his The Tethered Citadel trilogy and, for my sins, it’s also the first of them that I have read.

The book starts with a brief resume of books 1 and 2 before continuing the story. As we meet each character we are filled in as to who they are and a brief history to keep us in the loop.

This is not a fantasy where we confuse the good guys with the bad guys (and there are good and bad factions) and we know who we’re rooting for from the off. Sometimes we want a complex plot, sometimes we want one that jiggles about but is easy to follow – this one jiggles a lot.

Very well written and extremely addictive, this book is fabulous fun and I enjoyed it immensely. Yes, I knew who would prevail and peace would reign, because it's that kind of story, but that didn’t change a thing for me. 

I really would recommend this to both established fantasy readers and new readers alike.

Clearly, if I attempted to summarise the plot it could give spoilers to anyone with plans to read books 1 and 2.

Witchbottle by Tom Fletcher

 Once Daniel had a family - a wife and child - and a career, somewhere in a city vaguely 'down south', but now he's living alone, working as a milkman in the rural north-west of England. His job is undemanding, monotonous, but he likes the lack of pressure, and being out driving round the countryside. Recently though odd things have begun to happen - Daniel's seeing ghosts, and it seems like many of his customers are too, and although Daniel's girlfriend can help out with a 'witch bottle' to keep phantoms and nightmares at bay, it seems to be just a stop-gap measure. There's also the mystery surrounding the men driving the Fallen Stock vans, ostensibly they're collecting dead animals from the farms for safe disposal, but Daniel feels they're up to something far more sinister.

It's a synopsis that feels full of dread and suspense, but for my taste it took just too long to get round to the creepy bits. The detail about milk rounds and the quirks of the customers would have been all very well in a different sort of book but here they just seemed drawn out, and unnecessary. When the story eventually gets round to Daniel's nightmares, and the ghostly presences appearing all over the neighbourhood, the chill factor cranks up a notch or two, but it was too little, too late for me. 

Map's Edge by David Hair

 Dash Cowley is a man in disguise. For the past few months he's been passing himself off as a healer, and living as invisibly as possible in Thesveld, a village at the end of the world, but in a previous time he was Raythe Vyre, a nobleman, soldier and sorcerer. Following a failed rebellion against the Bolgravian Empire, he was forced to flee, moving from village to village with his daughter, Zar, until they've ended up by the sea with nowhere further left to run. Till, that is, he hears by chance of a source of riches; istariol, a rare mineral used in sorcery, has been found in the frozen north. There's enough to make the fortunes of all Thesveld's villagers, so they band together and head off on an adventure beyond the limit of the known world.

It's a good mix of adventure, magic, and inventive world-building, as the villagers pack up their lives and travel north, heading for the iceheart where nothing grows and no one lives, or so they believe. Behind them come the Empire's men - soldiers, spies and sorcerers - determined to track down the defiant rebel Vyre and find out what has persuaded a whole village to up and take to the road. Even without these pursuers, the journey isn't easy. There are the expected physical setbacks to overcome, encounters with the remains and the magic of a previous civilization, plus rivalry and treachery amongst the villagers' own numbers. 

Although at the back of your mind you know all will come well in the end - that Vyre will find the source of istariol, that the majority of the villagers will complete the journey unscathed, and the bad guys will eventually be beaten - the story is a compelling, engrossing read you can disappear into for hours at a time. 

The only downside is that Map's Edge is book one of a series, and there'll be a wait before the next installment of the story.