Illumination
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The fantasy field has been waiting for this for years: Terry McGarrys first novel.
Formerly the Vice President of the Science Fiction Writers of America, a longtime copyeditor for all the major publishers, and the author of a number of well-received short stories, McGarry is extremely well known throughout the genre. And now, with talent, insight, and skill rarely seen today, McGarry has crafted a fantasy adventure of the first rank; a wonderful, gripping adventure.
Liath was proud to have passed her challenge and become a true mage, ready to journey the land and find a Triad to bond with as an Illuminator. But that very night, her light fails her: she can no longer see the magical illumination guiders, and thus, despite the mages badge upon her breast, can no longer call herself Illuminator.
Liath travels to the city and petitions the Ennead, the senior mages of the land, for help and a cure. Before they will help her, they set a task for her to fulfill: she must find and capture the rogue Dark Mage, and bring him to the Ennead for justice; only then will her light be freed.
So goes Liath on the most important journey of her life, for the future of the world rests on her success or failure--but which one?
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Muzzy magicking mars SFWA vice-president McGarry's first, ambitious foray into Faerie. Inhabitants of her island world, Eiden Myr, are illiterate but protected from storm and disease by the Ennead, nine powerful mages hidden in the bowels of the enigmatic Holding and supported by lesser magic makers functioning in "triads." The thinking wordsmiths shape spells, while the feeling binders wordlessly sign them into being and the sensing illuminators elaborately decorate the vellums the binders strip from the flesh of sheep and goats. When Liath, daughter of a humble publican, petitions the Ennead for help in regaining her gift of the magelight, they set her a daunting task: to ensnare Torrin, the elusive Darkmage unsettling the realm by teaching its children to read and think for themselves, and return him to the Holding for "coring and sealing." Before the resolution of Liath's quest, her world is predictably turned inside out, and she falls in overwrought love with the man she's supposed to hate. McGarry's profusion of characters are difficult to untangle even with the scantily glossed name and word lists supplied. Dangling threads of plot and occasional chatty but jarring colloquialisms tend to obscure her message, that the loss of literacy has made magecraft (read: modern technology?) a craft of evil and pain. Literary promise sparks fitfully, but the author's hard-hammered insistence on her chief innovation, the triadic structure of her fictional society, makes for tough slogging.
