Maintained by Jerry Cullingford (Click here to mail)

_Chrome Circle_

by Mercedes Lackey / Larry Dixon

• Born to Run (book 1)
• Wheels of Fire (book 2)
• When the Bough Breaks (book 3)

Comments

I don't know why I do this to myself. The SERRAted Edge is something between a shared world and a coauthored series, consisting of novels written by Mercedes Lackey and assorted third-stringers, in a setting roughly consistent with the milieu/assumptions of Lackey's Tregarde novels. The quality of the writing has varied greatly with the skill of the coauthor, so it's doubtful that Lackey has been putting much time into these books. (Doubly doubtful, given her other writing commitments.) But Mercedes Lackey, on a good day, produces some of the best self-indulgence in the genre, and her previous work with Larry Dixon has shown more care and skill than her work with other junior coauthors, so I got "Chrome Circle".

I think the series has well and truly run out of steam. The premise has promise: Tannim, whom we've met before, finally meets his destined love, about whom he's been dreaming for years, only she turns out to be a half- dragon-half-kitsune (fox-spirit) who is trying to kill him. The authors then proceed to make the most pedestrian use of their raw materials.

The first half of the book is the setup: Boy meets girl, girl kidnaps boy, girl goes "oops" and gets him loose, boy and girl run for their lives. This isn't so bad, though it suffers from Lackey's usual tendency to push the plot where she wants it to go, no matter how improbably her characters have to behave to make it work. It's also somewhat weakened by an excessive and unnecessary reliance on earlier books in the series for background and atmosphere. The second half of the book is largely a sequence of small adventures as the two flee from one mythology's pocket world to the next, while their friends and enemies look for them. The sequence of adventures ends with everyone being in on the final climactic battle, which is resolved by the obligatory rabbit-out-of-a-hat.

The book is cute in places -- but boring.

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Bibliographic data

%A Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon
%T Chrome Circle
%I ?
%C ?
%D 1994
%G ISBN ?
%P ? pp.
%S Novels of the SERRAted Edge
%V Book 4 
%O price ?

Cover Art

Associated Artwork

Associated Filk