Between Worlds

[sawyl]

More Martha Wells, this time in the form of Between Worlds, which collects some of the stories of her Ile-Rien setting. Of these I've only read the first two, The Element of Fire and The Death of the Necromancer, leaving me unfamiliar with the characters in the last four stories, but each tale was self-contained enough that it didn't put me at a disadvantage.

The Potter's Daughter is a spooky fairytale from the time of The Element of Fire. Kade Carrion, the daughter of the king by way of a powerful fay, has disguised herself as a peasant in order to take revenge on the murderer of a local potter when she meets a travelling bard. With the charming young man following her round as she tries to apply her own brand of justice, it's painfully apparent from the outset that things aren't going to end well: not for Kade, not for Giles, and certainly not for the murderer of potter.

Night at the Opera follows Nicholas Valiarde and Reynard Morane as they try to extricate an aristocrat's daughter from a particularly nasty bit of blackmail. The daughter, Belina Shankir-Clare, is a breath of fresh air with a tendency to speak of things as she finds them. After a few tight moments during a performance of a particularly unlovely warhorse of an opera, the pair come through and save the day albeit with a certain amount of help from Belina, prompting Morane to suggest to Valiarde that they might benefit from having a woman on the team — which, in turn, presumably provides Nicholas with the incentive he needs to finally approach Madeline Denere, on whom he has clearly been crushing from afar.

The remaining four stories cover the friendship between Ilias and Giliead, who appear in The Fall of Ile-Rien series, set some years after the events of The Death of the Necromancer.

Holy Places has more than touch of Ancient Greece about it, with young Ilias taken out onto a hill by his step-father and left to die of exposure. Wandering back towards town, he gets lost and finds himself at the home of Karima and Ranior just as wizard is attempting to kill Giliead, who has since his birth been Chosen Vessel of the God of Cineth. Rites of Passage, set a decade later, follows Ilias and Giliead as they set out on their first unaccompanied wizard hunt using Giliead's ability to see the hexes and curses left behind by a rogue musician.

House of the Dead finds Ilias and Giliead, now experienced in the ways of the supernatural world, travelling out to a mining town high in the mountains. Attracted by the prospect of gold, the miners established their town beyond the protections of the gods, relying on the presence of towns lower down to deter wizards and curselings. Sadly this reasoning turns out to be horribly flawed, as the pair discover when they find Taerae completely denuded of its population.

In Reflections, Ilias and Giliead find themselves close on the heels of a fleeing wizard. After a long chase, they find themselves in a wood where some strange spirit of the place tries to tempt Giliead to stay forever and it falls to Ilias, despite his lack of divine gifts, to save the day.

Thanks to my lack of knowledge of The Fall of Ile-Rien books — they don't seem to be available in ebook editions in the UK — I came at the characters and their setting completely fresh and quick found myself enjoying them very much. The Classical structure of the world is very charming and strong contrast with the 19th century French atmosphere of Ile-Rien itself. The system of magic and curses is fascinating, as is the concept of a local god who protects a particular town through their Chosen Vessel, with communication between the two gradually becoming harder as the Vessel gets older — perhaps explaining why they tend not to live to a ripe old age.