Song Quest ¦ Crystal Mask

These are the first parts of a rich new fantasy sequence which reworks the battles of light and dark and good and evil in ways that are reminiscent of Ursula Le Guin. The Isle of Echoes schools its young to be the singers who will use their gifts to preserve harmony. Both books start here, some twenty years apart, with the discords of the young scholars, before venturing out across the wild seas to the mainland and the awful challenges there. Song Quest is the wonderfully exciting and award-winning start to the sequence. The novice Rialle is part of the group which sets out to find the cause of disturbances, chasing also the runaway novice Kherron who has jealously made Rialle's life miserable. Alternately we follow the two characters until their stories come together in a battle for survival that is exciting, engrossing and moving storytelling. Crystal Mask follows a similar sequence but opts to push Rialle, whom we have come to admire, into the background and introduce the never quite likeable Renn as a reluctantly gifted novice. When Shaiala is brought, struggling and terrified, to the Isle, desperate to understand what has happened to her friends the centaurs, Renn is the only one who can understand her. Their battles continue into the journey to the mainland where they too have to confront the evil Frazhin in scenes that are again powerfully vivid.