Some time ago, Rachel Neumeier sent me a review copy of her first book, The City in the Lake, which I read, enjoyed, and reviewed quite positively. Consequently, when she contacted me recently and asked if I’d like to read her second book, Lord of the Changing Winds, I eagerly said yes.

As it happens, my response to it was mixed. I liked the beginning. I liked the ending. I liked the characters. The middle…I had some trouble getting through the middle. As I wrote to Rachel–we’ve been corresponding, in an extremely occasional and desultory fashion, for around ten years now, so I guess I can call her Rachel–after finishing it, though, I wasn’t sure whether the problem was the book, or an inability to concentrate on my part. (I got an iPhone that weekend. I’m a geek. So sue me.) Consequently, I held off on writing a review, as I didn’t want to review the book unfairly. Meanwhile, my 10-year-old son (who is reading at an 11th-grade level, according to a test they gave him last week) read the book. Well, I say he read the book; it would be truer to say that he devoured it, and wanted to know when we could get the second book in the trilogy.

Much to my surprise, yesterday afternoon I found Land of the Burning Sun (The Griffin Mage: Book Two) at our local Barnes & Noble. I brought it home, and started reading it earlier today. Well, I say I read the book; it would be truer to say that I devoured it, and wanted to know when we could get the third book in the trilogy. (December of this year, evidently.) So at this point, I’m willing to accept that my difficulties with the first book were due to the circumstances in which I read it, rather than with the book itself.

So, what’s it about, I hear you asking.

First, there are the griffins: beautiful, fierce, inhuman, unhuman. Griffins are creatures of Fire and the Desert, which they bring with them wherever they go. They are not comfortable companions for human beings, whom they scorn. The cold mages of the kingdom of Casmantium have maintained a low-level kind of war with the griffins over the centuries; the cold mages (and humans in general) are creatures of Earth, not of Fire, and between Earth mages and the Fire is antipathy and revulsion.

In Lord of the Changing Winds, the griffins come south from their home in the north of Casmantium to make a new home, evidently, in the kingdom of Feierabiand. And one woman, Kes, a peasant and a healer, is taken by the griffins and made to serve their needs. War comes, and Feierabiand and Casmantium must come to blows–with each other, and with the griffins. What does Kes want? And what of Lord Bertaud, trusted envoy of the King of Feierabiand? And what of Kairaithin, the last griffin mage?

Land of the Burning Sands picks up shortly after Lord of the Changing Winds leaves off, but in a different setting and largely with different characters (though Lord Bertaud and Kairaithin have important roles, and Kes appears briefly). The griffins have returned to Casmantium, and bid fair to destroy the kingdom. Gereint, former magic-bound slave and a gifted “maker”, must decide whether to aid the last cold mage of Casmantium against the griffins, at an unknown cost to himself.

What I especially enjoy about these books are the characters, who are complex, surprising, and not infrequently delightful; I especially liked the Lady Tehre, from the second book, a true absent-minded magic engineer and all around neat lady. And the second thing I like about these books are the difficult moral dilemmas the characters are faced with–and that, in general, rather than making the “hard” decisions that work out to their own benefit, they make the truly hard, and right, decisions that require real self-sacrifice and great personal cost.

Rachel’s first book was published for the teen market; these next two are simply labelled “Fantasy”, but there’s nothing in them that would prevent me from giving them to my kids; and there’s a lot of food for thought for them between the covers, as well as a galloping good read.

(On the off-chance that the middle section of Lord of the Changing Winds really is a little slow, stick with it. The ending is worth it, and the second book is definitely good all the way through.)

Sean Russell, author of The Swans’ War series among other fantasy novels, has begun to turn his hand to historical fiction under the name S. Thomas Russell. His first outing is Under Enemy Colors, a tale of the Royal Navy in the age of sail.

The tale begins shortly after the French Revolution has devolved into a Reign of Terror. The protagonist, Charles Saunders Hayden, is a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Born of an Englishman and his French wife, Hayden was raised in both England and France and speaks both languages as native tongues. He was in Paris in the days of the revolution, and supported it with joy…until he saw the mob chasing down and killing men guilty only of the slightest rumor of wrong-doing.

Hayden’s English father is long dead; he has no patron; and so his naval career is stalled. Given his skills and accomplishments (he is, of course, a consummate seaman) he should be made a captain; instead, he is offered a position as First Lieutenant to the incompetent, wrathful, and cowardly Captain Hart, whose crew is on the verge of mutiny.

All of this is familiar territory. The question is, how does Russell stack up against those who have ploughed the same stretch of water?

The plot is perhaps somewhat hackneyed: incompetent and detested captain, check, competent and admired subordinate, check, surly, dissatisfied crew, check, the Rights of Man, check, mutiny, check, heroic deeds, check, court martial, check, vindication, check; given the premise, it could hardly go any other way. When one sits down to a book of this kind, one knows what one is getting. But not all sea voyages from hither-to-yon are created equal, and it’s the scenery and incident along the way that make the trip.

On the whole, I have to say that I think he’s a better writer than C.S. Forester. Hayden strikes me as a more complex character than Horatio Hornblower; with his mixed parentage he is indeed a kind of composition of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. He’s also better, I think, than Alexander Kent, author of the Bolitho series. On the other hand, he’s not Patrick O’Brian…but no one is, so that’s hardly surprising. (NB: I read O’Brian before I read Forester; perhaps if I’d read them in the other order I’d have a higher regard for Forester. As it is, I found him lacking.)

The second book in the series, A Battle Won, is due to be released in hardcover this August. I’m looking forward to reading it, though probably not until it comes out in paperback.