I still love this author’s use of language – she reminds me of Patricia McKillip – her landscape descriptions are amazing. I loved the first trilogy of hers that I read. I’m finding this series a bit more of a slog.
The series is basically the story of the descendants of a rather nasty sorcerer, who gifted his descendants with invulnerability. However, they pretty quickly repudiate all he had stood for, and in fact, Jarred, the hero of the last book, only finds out that he’s Jaravhor’s descendant in adulthood.
This book is the story of Jarred’s daughter Jewel, forced to flee the marshes where she was born after the tragic death her parents, who were themselves trying to flee the local king, who wants Jarred to open the sorcerer’s keep for him.
Jewel finds her way north, out of the kingdom of her birth, to the mountain home of the Weather Masters. There, she’s taken in, and grows to adulthood. But there are at least a few people that know that Jarred had a child, and through trickery, Jewel is convinced to open the Sorcerer’s keep. There, she does not find the rumored rooms of treasure, but instead, a puzzle, that just might lead to eternal life.
Where this becomes a slog is how much happens in this book. Just when you think that surely the main point has come and gone, some other side quest, or issue comes up. It’s not that I don’t like the story, but I think it could have done with a bit more breaking up.