The second story focused on Mykella (the first being Lord-Protector's Daughter). The previous book on her seemed to be the same Modesitt formula of learning about your powers and needing them as fast as you can develop them, 'or else', but from a female point of view. This book goes in a bit of a different direction. Mykella is the ruler of her country, and a female ruler in a male-dominated society. So in addition to developing her powers, saving the world, and saving her land, she has to deal with gender biases. This book is extremely well done. The action flows, the characters change and grow, the viewpoint is interesting. This book is not a good first entry into the series. Some of the details especially about the history of Corus and the magic system may only make sense because of reading all the previous Corean Chronicles. Moreover, this book starts off exactly where the previous book ends. Lord-Protector's Daughter needs to be read first. But if you're read LPD, then this novel really shines. In my opinion its better than the first, because the first was setting the scene for this and presumably later books. The main reason why it ends with 4 stars instead of 5 is that the love story in it progresses in a less-than-believable way. The depth of love grows while the two aren't around each other much. When questioned, the guy talks about things he's seen or noticed, but he wasn't around for most of what we've seen as the reader. That one scene seemed a bit contrived as a method of justifying where it was going. That said, the remainder of the relationship after that point was fine. With those caveats (read LPD first if not all of the prior Corean Chronicles, and suspend some disbelief about the start of the relationship), it is well worth reading. Better than The Lord-Protector's Daughter, in fact they really should have been published as one book, since the first was pretty weak on its own and quite short. Even then, it wouldn't really be up to the standard of the first few in the Corean series. But still, 3 stars.Re-read, 8/14. I'll leave it at 3 stars, but it barely makes that. The handling of the romance is just horribly, terribly awful and almost makes me want to drop it to 1 star.
What do You think about Lady-Protector (2011)?
I like the way Modesitt creates characters and plots that captivate.
—shadanas
