Matthew Hunter

Arrows of the Queen is probably Mercedes Lackey’s first published work, or close to it, and that shows; although it’s well written for a first novel, it has the rough edges of inexperience, and a certain naive simplicity that renders it eminently suitable for children (really, young teenagers) and sometimes less engrossing for adults. All her works tend to have a touch of those qualities, but Arrows of the Queen is an explicitly escapist fantasy: a young girl’s dream of magical horses to cure her loneliness and carry her away from all her troubles.

The White Rose is the third book in the Chronicles of the Black Company. The Lady’s victory over her husband the Dominator at Juniper Shadows Linger came with a high price: the loss of the Black Company, long sworn to her service, to follow the White Rose… the prophecied rebel who first imprisoned her and her husband 400 years ago, now reborn to meet the Lady’s renewed threat. All unknowing, the Black Company had sheltered the White Rose herself within their ranks, and when the Taken begin to turn on them, chose survival and personal loyalty over the Lady’s service.

The Black Company opened Glen Cook’s dark military fantasy with a flood of smoke and flame. The story continues in Shadows Linger, as the Black Company begins to learn the dirty little secret the Lady left in her grave when an unwitting wizard freed her. If the Lady is a merciless, uncaring tyrant, than the Dominator cares very, very much about the betrayal that left him trapped. And not in a loving, tender sort of way.

Imagine a hard-bitten mercenary company, the last of the 12 Free Companies of Khatovar, wielding swords, spies, sappers, and seige engines with equal facility in a world where wizards rule the battlefield and the last of the dragons was eaten millenia ago by something even more dangerous. Imagine ten of the most powerful wizards in the world, all bound to serve one even more powerful than they: the Ten Who Were Taken.

The fallen: Bayonetta, warrior queen, destined to bear Feverborne’s children, slain by a skeleton to the face. Parmox, Torchbearer, dissolved by pink slime. Tannen, elf, was laid to rest in the manner of his people. Baldin, torchbearer, died to pink slime?