Apparently, I am still starved from my long bout of very little reading, because yesterday another book found itself devoured at a rather alarming pace. Of course, Kushiel’s Mercy is admittedly not the first Jacqueline Carey book that I have finished in a day, and as I was feeling a bit down yesterday it proved an excellent way of drowning my sorrows. In short, it didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of lasting longer than a day.

Picking up almost right on the heels of Kushiel’s Justice, which saw Imriel returning from his quest to slay his Alban wife Dorelei’s killer, Imriel and Sidonie are now determined to no longer defy Blessed Eleu’s edict of “Love as thou wilt”. Choosing sense over love has caused them grief and caused the deaths of not just Dorelei and with her Imriel’s unborn son. But Sidonie’s mother, Queen Ysandre, is not about to give them her blessing. Too many still remember the pain caused by the treacherous actions of Imriel’s infamous mother, Melisande Shahrizai, and unless Imriel can find her and bring her to justice the queen will not allow him to become Sidonie’s consort. At least not if Sidonie is to remain the heir.

I have read appallingly little of late. Somehow, I just slipped out of a very long habit and ended up spending what normally has been reading time on other things. When I finally got around to picking up a book that has been on my to-read list for a long while, I ended up devouring it in a day of rather frantic reading, which showed me just how poorly I had fed my addiction of late. And, of course, it also showed that the book in question was so good that I couldn’t put it down. This was not a surprise, however, since C.S Friedman’s Coldfire trilogy ranks very high on my list of favourite books, and I am glad that my high hopes for her first new book in a very long while were fulfilled.

Feast of Souls is the first novel in The Magister Trilogy, set in a world where the price of magic is a high one indeed. To use magic, one must tap into the soulfire, the athra, which each person possesses in a limited amount. Once your soulfire is used up, you die. Every little use of magic eats into your lifespan, taking away anything from just a few seconds to several days. At least, that is, if you are a witch. The Magisters, however, have found a way of not only living a normal lifespan while practising magic but of making themselves virtually immortal. In the Second Age of Kings, they are the black-clad power behind almost every throne in the world.

Placeholder for eventual review following publication.

A Companion to Wolves, a collaboration between Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, is set in a harsh, northern land were men bonded to huge wolves defend their lands and their wolfless kin from great trolls and wyverns. But the wolfbrothers are not well regarded by the wolfless, not the least because the bonding between man and wolf is so close that when the wolves mate, so do the men—with each other. Njall, a jarl’s son, is chosen as tithe to the wolfbrothers, but his father resents him for going and Njall himself is anything but certain about his choice. At first, his sense of honour is what keeps him at the wolfheall. Then, as Viradechtis is born, love for his wolfsister becomes the force that holds his new life together and helps him cope with the demands of his new position. And at the same time, the threat from the trolls worsens, escalating into a conflict that seems set to lead to the destruction of one side or the other.

Before I started on the book, I considered for a while if books that set out to comment on other books should be approached in a particular way. Is it best to be aware of the stated purpose of the book? Is it best to have read the books being commented on? In most cases, it seems like either of these circumstances would make a difference to how one perceives the book. I know, for example, that Jacquline Carey’s The Sundering duology was poorly received by some people who did not know that it was a purposeful rewrite of the basic ideas in Tolkien and simply took it for a badly disguised rip-off.

Review forthcoming.