Maintained by Jerry Cullingford (Click here to mail)
Other books in the trilogy are:
I have mixed feelings about this book; on the whole, I liked the Mage winds trilogy, but I don't think it's one of Misty's best.
This book is probably the one mainly responsible for that feeling - while the story of the new characters is up to Misty's usual high standard, her treatment of the characters we already know from the _Arrows_ series is sometimes disappointing.
I felt they behaved in extremely hard to believe ways in places - Almost as if Misty was forcing the plot to go the way she wanted, and if that meant characters acting in unlikely ways, tough!
(Actually, having reread the book recently looking for examples to back this up, I could only find one and a half :-) examples where things were "hard to believe" as opposed to unexpected, though there's a low grade background rumble as well :-). For more details, click here . It's a pity, really, because with a bit more effort things could have been done much more smoothly and believably. The other books in the trilogy work much better, so hopefully we can put this down to Misty trying to turn out too much too fast at the time.
One general comment - Misty is much better at depicting the good guys, and making them people we get involved with and care about, than she is at doing the villains. You get to see more of the main bad guy in this trilogy than we did - for example - in the _Arrows_ trilogy; that - along with the awkward characterisation mentioned earlier, also helps to bring my overall rating down a bit, even though the bulk of the trilogy is good.
Also, there isn't as much groundbreaking new stuff in this trilogy as the others - We've seen a lot of the elements before, in general if not in specific - so although the story is fresh, the background isn't fresh to the same extent.
On rereading, this is actually a fairly good book - although some of what happens with the known characters may put you off it somewhat at first.
The remaining books in the trilogy do better - any out-of-character goings on have served their purpose and are out of the way.
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%T Winds of Fate %A Mercedes Lackey %C New York %D July 1993 %I DAW %O Cost? %G ISBN 0-88677-562-0 %P ? pp