Review brought to you by OBS staff member VerushkaBeware of SpoilersCaught in Crystal is part of Patricia Wrede’s acclaimed Lyra series of books, now published for the first time in ebook form. The series consists of five books that are loosely connected, but all are based on the same world – Lyra. An interesting side-note is that Wrede created a role-playing game about Lyra, and after reading this book, it’s one I would love to get my hands on.I think the hidden gem of this novel is the introduction to the Lyra series by the author. Included in the introduction is a collection of posts Wrede shared on her blog of the the first chapter of Shadow Magic, and her reasons for the changes she made. It is such an intriguing look into her thought processes as a writer, and includes comments and points-of-view that as a reader I know I haven’t thought of before. When I found myself going back and re-reading parts of the excerpts and her comments, I realized I would have to leave this part of the book until the end, because I would have these comments at the back of mind while reading, wondering what she was thinking. Kind of like watching a behind-the-scenes featurette of a movie, seeing how all the SFX are done and not being able to forget that knowledge while watching the movie.But, back to the book – the story of this novel revolves around Kayl, an innkeeper and former member of the Sisterhood of Stars, a powerful and respected coven of witches. But, within the Sisterhood, Kayl was considered a warrior, not a magic user. She left the Sisterhood years before the book begins, and after a mission that went horribly wrong. When the book opens, she is an innkeeper, a widower and a mother trying to keep her children in line and her head above water in her business – all in all, she is facing the typical issues any single mother would.Soon enough, the Sisterhood comes calling, asking her to return to its fold and to return to the Twisted Tower, the very place that she went to years before on another mission for the Sisterhood. The Sisterhood believes that whatever is currently interfering with its magic will be found there. Nothing is straightforward about that though, for Kayl can’t trust her memories of the prior mission, and Dara, her daughter is to her dismay intricately tied to the current mission despite Kayl’s best intentions of protecting her from her past.So, it would seem straightforward enough right? The best stories often are, and with this Lyra title at least (the others are on my to-read list) Wrede shows off her world-building skills, something I find that pretty much makes or breaks a series for me. Lyra is a world with four races, in conflict over different issues and experiencing very familiar biases. The Sisterhood begins the book as a coven that is looked up to, but Kayl notes their awful treatment of two beings she is close to – Glyndon (Varnan) and Bryn (Wyrd). The book includes a prologue where Wrede provides a tale of the history of Lyra and its races, its wars and while reading such histories can be a chore in some titles, Wrede has crafted a prologue that makes her Lyra history something that is interesting to read.Through the book, aside from the characters’ interactions, there are interludes, histories really, of the places where a large part of the book occurs. Again, they are a straightforward telling of the places’ histories. They bring weight to the chapters that follow, and these histories, like the prologue are relatable to any reader I think, which makes them a strength of the novel.Character-wise, it is Kayl and her children will receive loving attention from Wrede. But Kayl, first – what I liked was years after being part of the Sisterhood, Kayl acknowledges she is older and out of shape compared to her younger, warrior self. It’s going to take time to get back to being fighting fit, practice even and I know it seems strange, but things like this are often glossed over in books and I can appreciate a writer treating a character realistically like this, and giving her the time to get back to being fighting fit. In this case, during Kayl’s journeys to different places in the book, she makes a point of mentioning the practice Kayl goes through with her sword, remembering old lessons she learned at the Sisterhood.Another facet of Kayl’s character that I found interesting was that she was the only female warrior in the group travelling to the Twisted Tower. It’s not that Glyndon or anyone else was incapable of physically defending themselves, but Kayl in her past was defined as being a warrior, and a strategist in the Sisterhood (remember this book was written in 1987) in the story. Wrede has flipped expectations when it comes to what readers might expect of a story featuring magic, I think.This isn’t a story without romance, but it is done subtly. Glyndon, an old friend of her husband (a wizard too) returns and admits to having loved her for years. From the point I found this out, I did consider that perhaps their romance was too subtly done, shown in the briefest of touches or banter, but then it occurred to me this isn’t the tale of a romance between Glyndon and Kayl, this is Kayl’s tale – a mother who is trying to right her past, and whose children always come first. Glyndon is and should be secondary to that.I do confess though, I would love to read a tale about what he went through in his years apart from Kayl or perhaps learn more about why he loved her for so long. Or, even a tale of their lives after this one.Mark and Dara, Kayl’s kids are the other important part of this novel for me – they can be annoying, as kids their ages tend to be, but obedient of their mother when they should be. They are ultimately everything that drives Kayl, and for them to matter as much to readers as they do Kayl, they needed to be fully realized characters with quirks, and strong relationships with their mother.The characters of the Sisterhood are secondary I felt to the above characters I mentioned, but they play their part if being aloof characters, caught only by their desire to regain their magic. They manipulate whoever they need to achieve those ends and Kayl struggles with seeing that truth about them compared to the high esteem in which she held them years previous. Despite the circumstances in which she left the coven, she has to admit that to herself and let go of the old image she had of them.All in all, this is a wonderful read, filled with incredible world-building and characters that are easy to relate to.http://openbooksociety.com/article/pa...
Patricia Wrede's back-catalogue is now being published electronically. This one seems to be published as YA but certainly crosses age boundaries well.Kayl, a single (widowed) mother with two children is an innkeeper living a quiet life. Her biggest worries are taxes and a suitor she would rather have as a friend. When Corrana, a member of the magical Sisterhood of Stars arrives on her doorstep, closely followed by Glyndon, Varnan mage and her late husband's friend, her quiet life is overturned.Kayl has not always been an innkeeper. Fifteen years ago she was a member of the Sisterhood herself, a warrior and a strategist, but when a joint mission to the Twisted Tower with three Varnan wizards (including Glyndon) went horribly wrong she decided enough was enough. She gave up her place in the sisterhood, married Kevran, one of the wizards, and settled down. Since his death (from natural causes - yes it happens even to wizards) she's carried on running the inn and raising her children, Dara and Mark, alone.But that first mission to the Twisted Tower has had disastrous after effects and now Corrana is here to persuade her to take up her sword on behalf of the Sisterhood again and return to the place where her friends died. With a posse of dangerous magic seekers on their trail Kayl, Glyndon, Corrana and the children set off across country to the Sisterhood and from there, after some negotiating, to the Twisted Tower.It's great to see the heroine of the story is a single mum with two kids. If not exactly middle aged, she's at least in her mid 30s. (Note I would have classed that as middle aged once, but now it seems incredibly young.) Her kids are not bolt-on extras, but are real people in their own right, the daughter, Dara, on the brink of growing up. There's a romance blossoming between Glyndon and Kayl though this isn't central to the story and is played down – much of the development off the page because a lot of the travelling (which takes months) is glossed over. The Sisters, however, apart from Corrana and to a certain extent Kayl's old team mate Barthelmy are a bit interchangeable.As ever Patricia Wrede's worldbuilding is superb. There are humans and a glimpse of non-human races, too. There's a wider world of politics and racial tensions bubbling beneath the surface and a fair bit of infighting within the Sisterhood itself. There are – I believe – five books set in the universe of Lyra. This is the only one I've read so far, but the world is fully fleshed-out and you always feel as though there's a lot more going on here off the page.
What do You think about Caught In Crystal (1987)?
Now this was what I was hoping the whole series would be like! I loved this book. It had interesting, fully fleshed characters, a fun story line, and lots of interesting insights into people and their motivations. I believe my favorite thing about this book is that our heroine isn't your typical young naive maiden. She is the widowed mother of two children and many of her actions and choices are made in consideration of said children. She is interesting to begin with, but as her past unfolds and the layers of her story overlap her present reality she becomes even more interesting. Furthermore the relationships in this book felt natural. My biggest complaint about the last three books (and many fantasy/fiction books in general) is relationships feel contrived and forced. Since many of the people in these have known each other for years their relationships feel natural and unstrained.
—Mailee Pyper
3.5 rounded up - because it's Patricia C. Wrede.While the Lyra books do constitute a series, as I understand it and as I remember it they are also each standalone novels. Put together, they relate the long history of Lyra; taken separately, they are perfectly readable each unto itself. I've always been a huge fan of Patricia C. Wrede, and I liked this book, a lot. But I didn't love it as much as I expected. There was nothing huge, but a handful of small things - like Kayl, on watch over her camp at night, sitting and staring into the fire while she tries to order her thoughts, thereby destroying her night vision completely. It specifically says she is watching the flames - so anyone could have come up behind her and knifed her in the back, or made as much noise as they wanted approaching because, no longer able to see in the dark at all, she would have been slow to react. It was just a tiny scene - but so much is made of the fact that she is a highly trained elite warrior that this tiny scene left a huge impact. Another small thing that irritated: a mention that someone who had been wounded spent four days in bed. The reason this annoyed me was that there were no beds then and there; the group was living rough in a campsite, so what he actually did was probably spend four days kept immobile in a nest of blankets and other people's cloaks on a pallet they'd cobbled together, on the ground.One aspect of the story that bugs me a little is one for which it is, itself, not really to blame; it's more the mass of fiction in general, not just this writer's and not just fantasy. It is a touch of the Mary Sues, in which there is one character who the opposite gender wants and the same gender wants to be. Kayl was very happily married to Kevran, who is some years dead as this story begins. It very quickly becomes clear that her neighbor and friend, Jirod, quietly loves her and would be very happy to fill the role of second husband. Then Kevran's old comrade Glyndon comes back into her life, and it quickly becomes obvious to the reader if not to Kayl that he loves her. It's useful for the plot, of course, for the attachments to be formed, or Glyndon's at least; it might have been more realistic and believable had Jirod simply been a solid friend and neighbor (perhaps with a hopeful eye toward bedding her). My complaint is that this seems to be the situation in a too-large number of books I've read lately – a symptom, maybe, of a sort of sharp focus in which the main female character of the story is just about the only female character (in this case the only available adult human female). It would be interesting to have a little more information on Kayl's past as an innkeeper with her husband. Kevran was a Varnan, and because of past wars Varnans are generally viewed with the sort of automatic hatred as Germans and Japanese were in the 40's. It might have slowed down the story, but without it I can't help wondering how they managed; setting up shop in the small village of Copeham, even without much of an accent, I would expect to be significant. Actually, that leads to another point: this might have benefited by being told in two books, or one book told in two discrete parts, rather than being set in the later timeline covering past events in extensive flashbacks. Characters' deaths would have had more impact if they were unexpected, rather than remembered; it seemed as though there was a tremendous amount going on in that earlier journey, from Kayl's introduction to the love(s) of her life to the beginning of the end of the Sisterhood's power, that begged for better exposition. It is a well-told story, with likeable and believable characters. I like Kayl and the life she's carved out for herself, and the way her story is told. I like Bryn and the Wyrd, and want more about them. Glyndon's combination of brashness and I like the relationship between Kayl and her past, and with the Sisterhood; I like that they're a bit bad-ass, and very few are the warm and motherly types that are the go-to archetype for female mages (especially Coranna – I like that she's an unapologetic bitca). I even like Mark and Dara, Kayl's children – they read as genuine children without crossing the line into "annoying and should be deleted", if perhaps a bit too here-and-now in their language; they sometimes sound like they're about to ask for a Coke and ten bucks to go to the movies. (I believe it was Mark who referred to Coranna as "weird", which felt very 20th-21st century and also clashed with the race Wyrd.) There are plenty of nits to be picked - I think this is far from Ms. Wrede's best work, but still very enjoyable.
—Tracey
I really enjoyed the characters and the storyline in Caught in Crystal. This is classic fantasy, with a group of main characters, a quest, magic, baddies, and dusty traveling. I liked the main character, Kayl, who gave up a life of adventuring when she lost her closest friends to a warped magic on their last quest.Now she’s an inn-keeper with two children to care for and an overzealous provincial secretary to fend off. Then adventure comes a-calling again, and Kayl’s reluctance to go haring off gives way to caution when the Sisterhood’s enemies show up on her doorstep.What follows include on-the-road companionship – with the requisite squabbling and bickering, fighting off the baddies, and self-discovery of sorts. While mostly formulaic and some secondary characters barely get mentioned here and there, some parts were far from predictable and the actual quest itself was interesting. I wanted to know more about the black ooze and Corrana’s motivations, and Barthelmy and Glyndon get spare exposure considering how important they are to Kayl.The writing style is fluid, the overall tone dark. The world is vividly drawn, with very definite delineation of each of the races populating Lyra. Definitely worth checking out for the fantasy fans out there.drey’s rating: Pick it up!
—drey
