A Tapestry of Spells by Lynn Kurland – review

I had this book on my shelf for the better part of a year before I picked it up to read.  I had really enjoyed the original trilogy in the Nine Kingdoms world Kurland started in a couple fantasy-romance novelas (for anthologies), but she uses a style of storytelling that lends itself to a certain mood.  It has always struck me as being an almost tongue-in-cheek parodic tone poking (loving) fun at the quasi-archaic language and bardic tale form of many epic fantasy, while gleefully diving into the worst cliches of it.  So, between needing the mood for something light even its darkest moments and assuming this was a completely new cast in a completely new time period from the trilogy, it took me a while before I had that evening where I looked at my shelf and thought, Yes, THAT one.  Honestly?  Waiting that long was a mistake.  (Er…sort of.  The flip side of not enjoying this book sooner than I did is that I only have to wait a month for the sequel, which comes out in early 2011.) 

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this book is the start of a new sequence–presumably also a trilogy–that parallels the other three books in the series.  It is about one of Morgan’s brothers, Ruith, who also survived their father’s display of ultimate evil power (although the survival of three of seven children, vs. none at all, is starting to call into question the efficacy of his prowess), who has kept himself hidden all these years by capping his own magic and living like a hermit.  He is drawn into the quest of Sarah, unmagical (or is she?) daughter of a powerful witch, who has to stop her brother from his quest to cover the world in evil using the pieces he has of Ruith’s father’s spells.

At this point this new sequence can stand alone, because while it made references to a couple of the characters from the first three books, it did not intersect with that story at all, and by the end of it we know where the timelines match up, but the siblings (Morgan and Ruith) have not yet encountered evidence of one another.  Obviously, or I would have known what it was from the back description.  But I feel eventually stories will intersect, and this angle of the storytelling will pick up the end of the first trilogy’s arc and tie up some of the loose ends.  So if you like the sound of this book, it can be the first one you read, but you should probably pick up the others at some point.

One of the things I think worked best for me in this book was that it toned down the archness of the original series.  Does this imply I was misreading, and Kurland wasn’t trying to be tongue in cheek with the fake archaic heroic tone, and has finally figured out how to write fantasy?  Or is it just that for these characters or this story–or based on reviews/comments deriding the tone of the first trilogy–she decided it was appropriate to bring it a little more in line with a traditional fantasy?  I feel like the whimsy here is about on par with Tolkien’s opening chapters about hobbits, and, while I did not mind the way the other books were written, this one did work better for me in that respect. 

I really enjoyed the way the romance between Sarah and Ruith developed.  It started out contentious but that faded fairly quickly into a companionable trust; the courtship through conflict is fun, but I don’t think it’s the only path to true love, and these two are just not senticous enough on a personal level for that kind of butting heads to work.  Instead their romance develops sweetly, and I like that just as much or maybe more.  Since I am mentioning that the books again have a love story underpinning the major plot, I should point out that these books get shelved in Romance, not Science Fiction/Fantasy.  Personally, I think they are put in romance only because Kurland is a known romance author; based on the content of the stories, I think they should be in fantasy.  If Sharon Shinn and Anne Bishop are fantasy and not romance, then so are the Nine Kingdoms books.

For being a standard fantasy road-trip quest, the events nonetheless took a few surprising turns.  I especially enjoyed the trail of failed attacks Sarah’s brother has left behind him, and how each of those damaged mages ends up in their party.  It backed up that neither Sarah nor Ruith are, in fact, hard-hearted, despite what they might think about themselves.  Also the mysterious stranger whose identity is only given as someone who likes to thwart the doing of good intrigues me; is he one of the old evil mages, or just a contrarian?  And Ruith’s reluctance to use his magic goes back and forth between being frustrating–as you want him to just embrace his true self–and a relief as you realize because his magic is walled away, it cannot be used against him.  Sarah’s seeming lack of power is obviously going to prove to be an unusual power; there have been hints about what it is, but she has yet to discover her power, and I am very curious to know just what it is she can do.

The next book in this sequence comes out January 4, and I’m significantly more excited about it than I initially was about this one.  I found A Tapestry of Spells to be a sweet beginning of a romance and a dark, unexpected adventure, and since it ended on quite the cliffhanger I can’t wait to find out what happens next!