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tracey_stewart's review against another edition
5.0
It was kind of amazing reading the Wizard King’s War again after all these years. In many cases, a writer’s first book is the best, and the ones that follow are attempts to recapture the magic. But now and then there’s a writer like Susan Dexter, who gets better, and better, and better. Ring of Allaire was good, but flawed. The Sword of Callandra was good – better. And The Mountains of Channadran? Wonderful.
Once again the story is pretty simple, and once again the book is not.
Almost all of Ms. Dexter’s main characters are in some way broken. Elisena has scars I won’t Spoil, but they’re such that would have long since destroyed a lesser woman. Crewzel had a husband once, and his loss is not only a grief but a danger to her and her young son. Tristan is, superficially, all right: he had no major traumas in his youth, before this year at least, apart from the scar of having been abandoned very young (how young?) in Blais’s orchard. But the last year has been both the best and the very worst; he gained Elisena in his life, but the loss of Blais is still terrible, and the kingship is not something he expected or desired.
The animal characters should be used as teaching tools for fantasy writers. Thomas, Minstrel, and Valadan are beautiful. Thomas is all cat. He may be able to speak fluently with Tristan – and, later, Elisena – but that’s because he’s grown from kittenhood in a wizard’s household. Well, Tristan was always able to hear him, but the wizard’s household doesn’t hurt. He’s no soppy slavish pet, any more than most cats are – if he doesn’t want to do something, damned if he will, and he uses his claws and teeth as necessary. Minstrel is not the featherhead ( ) most writers resort to when trying to give a bird personality ... not that there are so many of those; I’m actually trying, and failing, to think of any. So perhaps it’s better to say he’s not the featherhead one would expect of a sentient canary. (Yes, I’m using sentient in the way Star Trek taught me, and I really don’t care that that’s not the primary definition, thanks all the same – not that it’s anything pedants have picked on before, no precious… It’s the word I want. Sue me.) And Valadan … He’s magnificent. I love that Ms. Dexter chose to make him smaller than might be desired – he is not what most men think of when they say “war horse”. But he is in all other ways nearly perfect. Not utterly, but nearly: he has his limits, some of them the limits of being in horse form, some the expanded limits of a magical being able to perform near-miracles: he just can’t perform actual miracles. Even with his abilities and his sire and his sentience (there it is again), he is still a horse, and is painted as one, and he’s wonderful.
Once again the story is pretty simple, and once again the book is not.
Almost all of Ms. Dexter’s main characters are in some way broken. Elisena has scars I won’t Spoil, but they’re such that would have long since destroyed a lesser woman. Crewzel had a husband once, and his loss is not only a grief but a danger to her and her young son. Tristan is, superficially, all right: he had no major traumas in his youth, before this year at least, apart from the scar of having been abandoned very young (how young?) in Blais’s orchard. But the last year has been both the best and the very worst; he gained Elisena in his life, but the loss of Blais is still terrible, and the kingship is not something he expected or desired.
The animal characters should be used as teaching tools for fantasy writers. Thomas, Minstrel, and Valadan are beautiful. Thomas is all cat. He may be able to speak fluently with Tristan – and, later, Elisena – but that’s because he’s grown from kittenhood in a wizard’s household. Well, Tristan was always able to hear him, but the wizard’s household doesn’t hurt. He’s no soppy slavish pet, any more than most cats are – if he doesn’t want to do something, damned if he will, and he uses his claws and teeth as necessary. Minstrel is not the featherhead ( ) most writers resort to when trying to give a bird personality ... not that there are so many of those; I’m actually trying, and failing, to think of any. So perhaps it’s better to say he’s not the featherhead one would expect of a sentient canary. (Yes, I’m using sentient in the way Star Trek taught me, and I really don’t care that that’s not the primary definition, thanks all the same – not that it’s anything pedants have picked on before, no precious… It’s the word I want. Sue me.) And Valadan … He’s magnificent. I love that Ms. Dexter chose to make him smaller than might be desired – he is not what most men think of when they say “war horse”. But he is in all other ways nearly perfect. Not utterly, but nearly: he has his limits, some of them the limits of being in horse form, some the expanded limits of a magical being able to perform near-miracles: he just can’t perform actual miracles. Even with his abilities and his sire and his sentience (there it is again), he is still a horse, and is painted as one, and he’s wonderful.
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