Spellweaver by Lynn Kurland – review

Spellweaver is the latest book in Lynn Kurland’s fantasy-romance Nine Kingdoms series and the direct sequel to A Tapestry of Spells.  This makes it the middle book of a trilogy that parallels the first three Nine Kingdoms books; at the end of this book the two stories had still not come together, but the distance between them has been cut down significantly, though, knowing where the third book will go (it’s set up very obviously at the end of this one), I’m not sure if the two sets of characters will intersect partway through the final leg of Ruith’s quest or not until he and Sarah have successfully finished it. 

This book was different from the first trilogy’s second book in that it didn’t have the two characters running around on fool’s errands or sitting in stasis talking about their feelings.  Instead they were busy continuing their initial quest and learning what Sarah really is.  On that note, I want to discuss Kurland’s use of the “old wise man” character in this series.  Fantasy is notorious for having someone like Gandalf offer cryptic advice or vague warnings that are only helpful retrospectively, presumably because the wiser character doesn’t want to influence events or decisions that should be made solely by the (ignorant) character who is forced to choose one path or another.  Either that or they all have Cassandra complexes, and are terrified no one will ever believe them if they simply speak the truth.  Kurland plays with this idea repeatedly in this book, having Sarah and Ruith encounter not one, not two, but three people who knew exactly who Sarah was–and therefore what she was likely to be–and only the third, non-friendly one, will tell the girl about it.  The others make it clear they know more about her than she does but refuse to elaborate because it would take away from her the path to self-discovery.  Hm.  Well, it seems to me that if her life path has taken her into the presence of someone who looks at her and sees the ghost of her dead mother, that it’s a natural place on her life path to learn the truth; and how, exactly, is it supposed to be better for her to learn it when she accidentally ventures into the presence of someone who would kill her for her power, versus in the presence of someone who has benign intentions toward her?  Clearly the point of such behavior in this series is to poke fun at those sage and dignified figures in fantasy writing–which, let’s face it, is a lampooning those smug know-it-alls pretty well deserve.

By the time we get to the truth of Sarah’s past and her power, the mystery is more about the specifics than the existence of some unusual magic and a heritage that isn’t what she had always been told.  The explicit revelation came near the end of the book, and it left a lot of room for curiosity about what all Sarah can do now that she knows what she has to work with.  It’s also clear that she is on this quest not by accident but because she is probably the only person who can help Ruith finish what he needs to do to destroy his father’s legacy once and for all. 

Ruith’s true quest is revealed at the very end, and it is dark and scary and kind of a surprise, but one that immediately makes sense and has a decently clear back-trail of hints.  They just could have been hints leading in another direction, too, so the big villain of this trilogy remained in the shadows until now.  It will be exciting to see Ruith and Sarah on the last leg of their adventure; now the only problem is waiting until next winter to read it!