Eye Spy – Mercedes Lackey

The second of the Family Spies books follows Mags and Amily’s middle child – daughter Abidela. Abi’s been training with her father in the spy business, but it’s a bit of a place holder, because she hasn’t found out if she has any Gifts. One day, she and her best friend, Princess Katiana are out in the streets of Haven when Abi feels the bridge they’re about to cross fail, just in time to get everyone off – a rather spectacular presentation of a new gift. It turns out she can feel fault lines in non- living things. This immediately lines her up for classes with the Artificers – because she’ll need to know how things should be built. And it turns out that Abi loves this work.

This book is actually a little odd – it feels almost like a travelogue through someone’s life, rather than one big story, like many of the others in this series. That’s not a criticism, it’s just different.

I also do like that here’s another child of two Heralds who will not be a Herald, and that’s ok. The other really interesting thing in this story is the question of whether or not joining up with Valdemar is always a strictly good thing. It’s complete spoilers to go into details, but I was very interested to see the story touch on that.

Definitely looking forward to the third child – Tori’s – story. There’s a few hints in this book that it’ll be a good one.