The Banished of Muirwood

In an introductory note, Wheeler (the Legends of Muirwood trilogy) attributes the origin of this new Muirwood novel to a dream he had about an evil father, his daughter, and her skilled bodyguard, complicated by a wicked twist. His adolescent heroine is a banished and suffering Cinderella and, unknowingly, the villain of the tale, spreading chaos everywhere as she tries to save her realm. Maia, princess of Comoros, was trained secretly in magic. Wheeler alternates episodes of her struggles to reach the kingdom of Naess—where she hopes to become a maston, a priestly vocation forbidden to women, and find the history of the evil Myriad Ones—with nightmare flashbacks to crucial episodes in her past. These dizzying narrative shifts mirror Maia’s struggle with the evil spirit that tries to dominate and destroy her. Wheeler successfully brings his central characters to vivid life, especially Maia’s volatile father, whose sins recall Henry VIII’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon; Maia’s protectors, woodsman Jon Tayt and boarhound Argus; and Feint Collier, the dangerously handsome king of Dahomey. Readers will enjoy the rich descriptions of a created world that Wheeler clearly knows intimately, though series newcomers might have profited from a cast list and a recap of previous installments. [em](Aug.) [/em]