Matthew Hunter

Bern I had been putting this damn arm problem off long enough. I got the Glorious Blades back together in Westwood, planning to explore the Dolmenwood and make contact with a fae who might be able to fix my arm… somehow. It wasn’t as well planned as I’d like but I was out of ideas and so were the local churches. Oscar offered me the shield he had been using, a huge piece of twisted iron that I was surprised he could even lift, much less fight with.

We made our way back to Thatchem on birdback. The wizards of matwoob were willing to buy what we managed to recover, and expressed some dismay at our description of the current occupants of “their” tower. They did offer us a magical staff that would enable us to climb to the floating island via a stairway to heaven for future trips. Elvinia agreed to take charge of that on behalf of the group.

As soon as we stepped foot into the room below, a magical mouth appeared, shouting a word in some language none of us knew. It was obviously some kind of alarm. We hurried explored to the west, finding a staircase down and another alarm. We opened the door to the south just as some kind of creature entered the room, from the other staircase. With horror I recognized it from the tales of fellow guards: an armadillo with twin antenna, otherwise known as a rust monster.

The strange skeletal lampray latched on to u-Heury’s balls and bit down hard. Blood went everywhere, and the kid yelped like a eunuch. Before I could draw my sword, the thing detached and fled. Apparently u-Heury doesn’t taste fishy. I carefully offered prayers to Clocea to clense his body of injuries and his mind of impure thoughts, while laying my hands on his shoulders. It stopped the bleeding, but I wasn’t going to look closer to see what, if anything, was left.

Oscar arrived in Thatchem by ravenback, still looking frazzled. His robes were scorched and burnt, but he had acquired a book of magic that seemed valuable to the mages in the tower of the leaning goose. He asked me to take his raven back to Highfell and help the others bring back more. With my promise to return Verminbane to Forrest fulfilled, it seemed a reasonable way to spend my time.

We set off for the correct tower bright and early in the morning. The ravens flew us south, following the edge of the floating island, and we saw many towers around the edges. There were even ruined fortifications connecting some of the towers. We saw a tower made of sandstone, two more with a strange dome and a peaked roof. About a quarter of the way down, we came to a river, flowing off the edge of the island and disappearing into mist.

We crossed the pit, finding a T intersection with two more doors. Between us, we listened to them all. We heard voices behind one; someone was chanting. Stria opened the one next to it, just a crack, and closed it quickly. She whispered that there were more Vol cultists there, discussing how to get past some monster obstacle. Behind the third door, yet more dragon cultists. There were no obvious valuables or reasons to reveal our presence, so we left.

A Knight of the Word is the second book in Terry Brooks’ loose trilogy The Word and the Void. This book focuses on John Ross and his crisis of faith, with Nest (from Running with the Demon) trying to save him from himself. In my description of the first book in this series, I felt it was important to note that it wasn’t one of Brooks’ Shannara titles. The same applies here, but there’s also some stylistic differences from the first book in the trilogy as well.

A Talent for War is McDevitt’s latest novel, this one beginning a new series. The main character, a dealer in antiquities, is bequeathed a large inheritance when his uncle, an amateur archeologist, passes away. Along with the inheritance comes a lead on a discovery of great significance. The trail leads straight to the legend of Christopher Sim, a legendary commander whose guerilla tactics bought time to unify the planetary Confederation into a single force to oppose encroaching aliens.

I’m re-reading Katherine Kerr’s A Time of Exile for a somewhat unusual reason. I’ve read the whole series before once or twice, at least up to the most recently published book, but on my last reread someone else had my copy of this book. Since I had read it before, I skipped it and picked up with A Time of Omens. When my copy of Exile returned, I figured I might as well reread it, even though I had finished the original reread quite some time before.