Wind from a Foreign Sky

The Chancellor of Tielmark is bent on returning that small principality to the malignant Empire it broke away from 300 years ago. To do so, he kidnaps and holds spellbound the lovely sorceress Mervion, who, according to prophecy, may play a part in the Chancellor's treason. Mervion's twin, the young huntress and apprentice sorceress Gaultry Blas, must set out to rescue her sister and save the land. With predictable spunk, Gaultry withstands multiple injuries and indignities, including a near-rape and the allure of a wolf-eyed warrior bound to protect her. But before she attains full-blown enchantresshood, the narrative runs amok. Lacking the magic of convincing linguistic invention, first-novelist Reimann conjures up heavy-handed, contradictory plot convolutions that spill enough weltering male blood to blanch the die-hardiest feminist. Her prose shoots off the charts too, with phrases like ""eyes agleam with suppressed frenzy."" The fantasy is high here, but the execution of it is anything but. (July)