Carver's World

. . . richly inventive . . . readers will [be] swept along the broad stream of this fast-paced fantasy adventure. –Booklist



Skillful, evocative writing, a uniquely drawn setting, and richly developed characters . . . –The Midwest Book Review



Whitlock gives us a unique world of his own creation – a true world, deeply perceived and fully realized. Magic runs throughout the adventure, along with suspense, terror, and poignancy. And one of fantasy’s most marvelous birds (of sorts) . . . we can only wish for other journeys to come. –Lloyd Alexander



Three friends are drawn together by one’s misfortune. Each has wrongs to right and a story to tell.



Carver, a gifted, self-taught woodworker, is trapped in the shadow of his father’s painterly genius and his mother’s talent as a seer, until he suddenly shows rare talent as a weather mage. Traveling downriver in search of a mentor, he befriends a bemagicked raven girl and the bond servant fireboy on a steamboat. Fleeing the local baron, they hide among outcasts in a city of filthy canals, where mages are hunted and magic refuses to work. There, Carver must confront the enchantments of the great mage and the legacy of his missing parents to save his friends and choose the best use for his talents.



Four years a runaway, Raven risks recapture to return to Baron Cutter’s estate. She’s a bird mage now, but the memory of her escape haunts her. Did her mother abandon her that night, or did she desert her mother in an hour of need? The answer rekindles her rage and confronts her with two bad options: keep running away or help the mother who’s as strong-willed and sharp-tongued as she is – and has just born the baron’s heir. Drawn into an unwanted quest, Raven must learn to control her erratic talent and temper, to look beyond magic – and herself – to save what is most important.



After a hard year working on the stinking canals of Dunsgow, Fireboy’s skill as a boatman has earned him barely half the bond fee he needs to free mother. A chance meeting with a seer gives Fireboy a glimpse of a far different path, if he can decipher her confusing predictions. On the tangled, bemagicked rapids of the High Reach, caught between the mind-binding spells of a demented mage and the binding lies of a baron determined to destroy magic on all the rivers, Fireboy desperately risks losing new friends and his own free will, trying to discover which bonds really matter.