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This strong debut should draw in fantasy readers of all stripes." Hair portrays a stark and beautiful world breaking apart, with both good and evil characters desperate to reshape it through magic, war, and treachery. In a starred review of Mage’s Blood, Publisher’s Weekly said, "This multilayered beginning to the Moontide Quartet plunges listeners into a taut network of intrigue and mystery that tightens with each chapter.
Moontide quartet review series#
Mage’s Blood, the first volume of a series called The Moontide Quartet, is Hair’s first work of adult fantasy. Note: Opinions expressed in reviews and articles on this site are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of BookLoons.David Hair is the award-winning writer of two young adult fiction series, The Aotearo and The Return of Ravana (based on the Vedic epic The Ramayana). It will be worth your time, and this engrossing story will continue in the third episode, Unholy War. All these plot threads weave in and out of each other - with a great deal of violence, magic, captures and escapes - leading to a cliffhanging conclusion.Ĭomplicated plot, with a myriad of key characters to track? Absolutely, so do start with the first book. She escapes her captors with help from her dead husband's cold magi daughter Justina. Elena, whose body was taken over by a magi (but who never stopped fighting that possession), regains control and allies with Souldrinker Kazim Makani (who hates what he is).įinally there is Ramita Ankesharan, a simple woman whose pregnancy by the Bridge-Builder (now dead) has given her powers that she does not yet understand. Alaron only survives with the help of serpentine lamiae (human magical constructs who live short lives, are hunted by the Inquisition, and seek their Promised Land).Īnother plot thread follows young Queen Cera who has betrayed Alaron's Aunt Elena (her mentor and friend) and the people she nominally rules, in order to save her brother. Now her friends follow her trail (by windship), in particular Watch Captain Jeris Muhren and callow young Alaron Mercer, who has trained as a mage but has limited skills. She plans to take the artifact to powerful Bridge-Builder Antonin Meiros. Who has it? It seems that, at the end of the previous episode, Cym absconded with it from Norostein, leaving friends and allies in disarray. Magi Ramon Sensini also travels with the Crusade forces, on orders of his crimelord paterfamilias, but has his own agenda.Īnother key magical element (sought by both the good guys and the Inquisition) is the Scytale of Corneus, a souce of incredible magical power. In addition to their army they send the Inquisition's deadly magi against the Easterners. This time they are under orders from Emperor Constant, a puppet ruler under the control of his mother, Mater-Imperia Lucia, at whose court intrigue festers. But when it emerges (as it has at this point in the Moontide Quartet), the Rondian legions cross to the East on Crusade. One such is a magical construct, the Leviathan Bridge that is underwater most of the time.
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Along the way, the author introduces some very unusual fantasy elements and handles them well. The story is complex, with quite a few plot threads to track and follow in this world of Urte. Having done this, I strongly recommend starting this series at the beginning with Mage's Blood.
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The hard part about jumping into a new fantasy series in the middle ( Scarlet Tides is the second in the Moontide Quartet) is that it takes a while to figure out who are the good guys, the bad guys, and all the shades of grey in between. Scarlet Tides: The Moontide Quartet #2 by David Hair