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By The Sword, sometimes called Kerowyn’s Tale, is the first of what I call the Heraldic Biographies – by which I mean stand-alone novels describing an individual Herald’s life from the moment of being Chosen to the completion of their life’s main adventure. Kerowyn’s story substantially predates the rest, and ends up being vital to later events. But first, who exactly is Kerowyn? Simple: the granddaughter of Kethry (from the Vows and Honor sequence), Kerowyn is the eldest daughter of a minor noble whose marriage to Kethry’s only utterly brainless daughter was his one and only big lucky break.

Startide Rising picks up about 200 years after Sundiver left off. The first mostly-dolphin starship crew is assembled and sent on a survey mission. Upon finding a huge derelict fleet of unknown origin and sending a message home about it, several hostile races hound the small survey craft until she crashes in the ocean of a metal-rich waterworld. Apparently, the hostiles are all quasi-fanatical races who believe in the eventual return of the Progenitors, the race or races who began the practice of Uplift.

The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenantare composed of Lord Foul’s Bane, The Illearth War, and The Power That Preserves. Thomas Covenant finds his world turned upside down when he contracts leprosy and his wife divorces him, taking their son with her. Having managed to survive this experience, but never really recover emotionally beyond it, Covenant is universally ostracized by his community. One day he inexplicably finds himself transported to another world, a dream world that is somehow so full of life that his leprosy starts to fade.

Across known space, Humanity is a rare example of a species that achieved sentience and a starfaring civilization without the evident help of a Patron race. In the eyes of some aliens, this makes them unique; in others, it makes them outcasts. Humans have earned themselves a tenuous status in Galactic society, however, as they had already Uplifted two other races - chimpanzees and dolphins - by the time of First Contact.

The conclusion of CS Friedman’s Coldfire trilogy is intriguing and unpredictable, but falters occasionally on the way to a satisfying if somewhat anticlimactic conclusion.

Anita Blake and Jean-Claude struggle to sort out their love lives as a rogue pack of vampires moves into town, determined to take over the reins from the new Master of the City – and not incidentally, to leave a few corpses for the police to investigate in the process. What sounds like the plot of a novel is only another day in Anita’s harried life, and it doesn’t get any easier from there.

Smoke and Shadows is Tanya Huff’s attempt to resurrect her Vicki Nelson Investigations series. This time, one of the bit characters from the earlier series is faced with a supernatural threat while working odd jobs on a movie set, and he must manage to respond to it without the benefit of Vicki’s experience. His only ally is Henry, another of the original characters, and Henry has a problem with daylight…

Brilliance of the Moon is the third book in the Tales of the Otori series. We pick up the story with Kaede and Takeo having married hastily in Terayama and determined to claim their inheritance – an inheritance which, if they can make the claim stick, will grant them control of the vast majority of the Three Kingdoms. They are opposed by the Tribe, whose power is secret but vast; by Lord Arai, who is likely offended by their decision to marry without his consent; and by Fujiwara, who considered Kaede his betrothed.

The Empire of Isher (by AE Van Vogt) combines both The Weapon Shops of Isher and The Weapon Makers into a single edition. The combined work is still under 300 pages, but the sparse writing style means that a lot of action can be packed into those pages. While this edition was published in 2000, the stories themselves are noticeably dated. They are also unique and very hard to describe.

This, the Second Book of Murgen, continues to make use of Smoke’s unusual talents to provide a broad perspective to the Annalist’s recording of events following the end of the Dejagore siege. With the Black Company reunited with its Captain in Taglios, the time for the invasion of the Shadowlands has come, and preparations are moving rapidly. The intrigue is moving rapidly as well, for the Black Company has a long memory for betrayal, and the rulers of Taglios are beginning to think that their allies may just be worse than their enemies.