The Poisoned Crown
Amanda Hemingway
Del Rey, April 2007, $12.95, 384 pp.
ISBN 0345460804

In the English village of Eade lives an extraordinary group of people. There is the sorcerer who is several millennia old, Anne who followed her dead lover into death and was raped by a man from another world, the fledging witch Hazel and Nathan who contains a portal in his mind so that when he sleeps he travels to other worlds in spirit and sometimes in body.

During his travels he meets the Grandir, the ruler of a cosmos that has died with only one planet Eos hosting some life. Nathan likes the Grandir and helps him to perform the Great Spell which will supposedly fix the problem of magic causing pandemic death of a cosmos. So far Nathan has retrieved the Sword and the Cup on two different worlds and now seeks the crown on the underwater realm of Widewater where it is held in an underwater cavern of air by the goddess Nefanu. The goddess wants the mermen folk to go to war with the beings in the north since she hates all air breathers. Nathan wants to prevent the war and retrieve the crown but his troubles are far from over; in fact, they are just beginning.

THE POISONED CROWN, an interesting take on the great mythos of the Grail, concludes the Sangreal trilogy, tying up all the loose ends from the previous books in the series. Amanda Hemingway is a fantastic storyteller whose works will appeal to the Harry Potter Crowd and remind boomers of the early fantasy works of Andre Norton. Young adults as well as older, discerning readers will find this book thoroughly enjoyable.