Tracy & Laura Hickman, Mystic Empire

Mystic Empire

Tracy & Laura Hickman

Aspect, April 2006, $25.95, 393 pp.

ISBN 0446531073

Calsandria is home to Mystics who have Deep Magic, and to commoners who have no magic. The place can only be reached through portals known to the denizens of the city, because many outsiders would like to see the city destroyed again and the mystics scattered. Within Calsandria, clans jockey for more political power, which is why Rylmar Conlan is having his daughter Valana marry into the powerful Arvad clan.

Prince Treijan and his cousin disappear, and Valana and her sister Theona try to track them down. A wily dwarf uses a secret portal to take the sisters to where the prince and his cousin are staying. However, soon that place will no longer be safe, because the goblin horde from another world intends to conquer that land and the world of Fairy. The faery queen, besieged by the Kree and other enemies, throws her lot in with the humans, in the hopes that a victory will give them a new place to call home. Theona who was thought to have no magic has blossomed into a seer, who knows that the decisions certain people make will decide the outcome of the war.

Book Three of the Bronze Canticles is a spellbinding tale of ancient prophecy about to be fulfilled. The writing team of Tracy and Laura Hickman are great fantasists who pull the reader into the storyline from the very first page. Readers will finish this book in one sitting because it is such an absorbing reading experience. It is this reviewers fervent hope that the Hickmans return to Calsandria so the audience can see how the characters that we have come to love are doing.