I know it’s been a while since the last book review, but…I got hooked on re-reading the Honor Harrington’s Series and then some other stuff and didn’t get to anything new until yesterday…and this book hooked me so tightly that I finished it in less than a day and started writing this review as soon as I finished reading.
The book is John Lambshead’s Lucy’s Blade…from Baen books, of course :)
Unfortunately, this isn’t part of a series, just a single book…at least so far. I can easily see that the author left himself a hook so he could actually make it the beginning of a series, but he also finished the story well enough that it can stay as a stand-alone volume…I hope he chooses to continue into a series :)
Actually, it’s not only a single-volume writing…it’s the author’s first, and so far only, fiction book (unless you count an encyclopedia about weapons and ships from the Hammer’s Slammers universe as fiction writing). It’s my hope that he’ll keep writing and become a multiple-books-a-year author like most of those I’ve reviewed in this site…he’s that good :)
There’s two protagonists to this book, Lucy and her best (and only) friend Lilith.
Lady Lucy Dennys is an English noblewoman, barely 16 years old, living in the Elizabethan era of the barely nascent British Empire. Francis Drake is still just a commoner, the Virgin Queen is not long into her reign, and the Spanish still own the New World…oh, and magic exists :)
Lilith is a being from a parallel universe, made up of gravitic energy, who gets caught in Lucy’s body when Elizabeth’s court magician/scientist tries to conjure a demon to help the Queen’s head spy in discovering how the Spaniards plan to kill Elizabeth.
The book goes on to describe Lucy’s and Lilith’s adventures in the service of the Queen, under Sir Francis Walsingham’s Secret Service. Sir Francis is Elizabeth’s spymaster, running her Secret Service, and Lucy’s uncle and guardian.
This is one of the best fantasy books I’ve read in a long while, and it’s well worth getting it.
Oh! BTW….did I mention the whole book is a story being told by Lilith to Lucy’s granddaughter-15-times-removed when they meet for the first time? :) That’s what I meant when I talked about there being a good hook for the book being the first of a series, instead of just a stand-alone book…and I’d love to hear more stories from Lilith about Lucy and about whatever adventures lie in Lilith’s and Alice’s future.
Technorati Tags: john lamshead, fantasy, book review, urban fantasy, queen elizabeth, sir francis walsingham, virgin queen
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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 16th, 2007 at 1:50 pm and is filed under Books, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
[...] reading a lot lately, or at least a lot more than I had been :) And I think I’ll blame it on John Lambshead’s Lucy’s Blade, and Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, both of which re-awoke my like for fantasy, at least the [...]