[Jewelfire 02] • Throne, the Sapphire

Freda Warrington has been publishing fantasy since 1986. The Amber Citadel (1991) opened her "Jewel fire Trilogy", continued in The Sapphire Throne. Book one ended with ambiguous victory in a civil war among the Nine Realms of Aventuria--a war fomented by the unpleasant Bhahdradomen shapeshifters or Eaters:

They consume life to the bare bones, even consume space itself, but at the end of it they are still thin, still hungry.

Practical attempts to regroup and mend political fences after the war are overshadowed by a doom-laden sense that everything happened just as the villains wanted. The land itself remains badly wounded. Investigative and diplomatic expeditions are sent to the Eaters' land of exile and the other world of the elf-like Aelyr. The human characters remain engaging, fallible and flawed, losing their tempers unreasonably and going to bed with the "wrong" people.

Warrington plays ironic games with fantasyland expectations. The Bhahdradomen peasantry are horrible but pathetic: the killing of a possibly innocent young shapeshifter by a human mob seems a shameful atrocity. One traumatically abused girl learns that some of those remote, beautiful elves have a nasty private agenda. Even the traditional quest for a cache of ultimate weapons against evil goes unexpectedly awry.

By the end, after multiple betrayals and perhaps also because its new queen refuses to play dirty tricks, Aventuria is in blacker trouble than ever. Warrington's trickiness and energy breathe life into the sometimes tired genre of mainstream commercial fantasy. -- David Langford