Helpful Score: 2
Not her best work but a good fill-in-the-gaps between the other books.
Helpful Score: 2
I only wish Gael Baudino had kept writing. There is a real magic in her books. This story is one of the harder to read, simply because it brings evil a little too close to home. I'm only parting with this because I have multiple copies.
Helpful Score: 1
Largely set in times of torture and the Inquisition, it spans hundreds of years and thousands of miles as the last elf struggles to aid an apostate nun on the run, meanwhile dreaming of a distant future when elven magic will reawaken. Although Natil the harper, more woman now than elf, can glimpse a 747's gleam in the sky while within earshot of the Inquisition's agonies, she must rely on her human wits, dwindling magic, and, most of all, her faith in "The Lady" for the elven magic to survive. Baudino gives us minutely detailed images of a medieval world beset by poverty and greed, political scheming in the name of gold and God, and brutal exploitation of the weak by the powerful.
