Hidden Warrior

Lynn Flewelling

Hidden Warrior, the second book in Lynn Flewelling's Tamir trilogy, is an improvement over the first in every regard-- and the first was no slouch, I tell ya. Where the first began in a manner I can only describe (charitably) as "deadly slow"-- fans of Steven Erikson will recognize the tactic, I'm sure-- this one hits the ground running and never gives out. Much of this, of course, has to do with Flewelling not needing to spend nearly as much time on character-building, though this is not to say that new characters don't pop up, nor that the characters we already know don't develop. (Some of them, in fact, develop mightily, in ways you will not foresee.) Despite that fact that this is the middle novel of a trilogy, which is usually where things slack off, Flewelling has pulled in the reins here, tightened everything up, and produced quite a fine little book here.

When we last left Tobin and Ki, Tobin had just found out the great secret behind his birth (of which Ki is still ignorant), Prince Korin was waiting back in Ero, Arkoniel was holed up in Tobin's house afraid to be seen, and Iya was, well, nowhere to be found. We kick things off just as the last book is wrapping up, so things are just as they were. There are new secrets to be kept, new intrigues to be plotted, new battles to be fought, and more of Korin's well-meaning but empty-headed pranks to be covered up. In short, things are rolling along quite nicely. Cracks start appearing in the rather bucolic framework relatively quickly, however, and you know the whole thing will eventually come tumbling like an avalanche; the only questions are what the lynchpin will be and who will emerge from the rubble, bloodied but alive.

As with the last book, Flewelling brings this one to both a satisfying ending of the events in the novel and with just enough clues of what's to come that the reader is, likely, left panting for the final book in the trilogy (which, as I write this, is slated for publication in July of this year). If it keeps improving at this rate, The Oracle's Queen is a shoo-in for one of my top 25 reads of 2006.