Anne Kelleher, Silver’s Lure

Silver's Lure

Anne Kelleher

Luna, Dec 2006, $12.95, 459 pp

ISBN 0373802374

In the land of Brynhyvar, the High Queen Meeve is slowly dying from what she thinks is the same illness that took her mother. In reality she is slowly being poisoned by one of her inner circle and the Loquileans whose ambassador is on a state visit and whose mercenaries are spread around the countryside. The land knows something is wrong and it is not faring well. Blight is spreading across the land, goblins are on the rampage and Meeve's children answer her summons out of duty not love.

The realm of Faerie is affected by events in the mortal world. The goblins kill much of the court including the king and queen, silver from the mortal world is making its way into faerie poisoning the land and the magic isn't grounded. Timias, who was sent to the human realm to learn druid magic in hopes of finding some way of learning to control the magic want to keep the borders between faerie and Shadow (the human world). Timias is an unnatural creature who can become Faerie, goblin and human depending on what realm he is in. Because of his desire to make Faerie safe for the Sidhe he becomes the catalyst to changes the way the mortal world is ordered.

SILVER'S LURE is a very pleasant fantasy that focuses mainly on Meeve's children, all of whom are on a quest of some kind. In their own heroic way they are at the mercy of their feelings of duty and obligation to the land and to their mother. Readers may have a little trouble following all the subplots because they are linear and not sequential while the romantic sub-plot takes a back seat to the action oriented storyline.

Harriet Klausner