Coinspinner's Story: Sword and Circlet 3

Middle age is creeping up on the Torloc seeress Irissa and her husband Kendric, Wrathman of Rule, in the latest installment of Douglas's extended fantasy saga. Their teenage children are quite enough to keep them busy as their daughter Javelle resents not having her mother's witchy powers and their son Thane, first Torloc male to inherit magical talent, has to adjust to his fate. After the long-lived seeress is shocked into recognition of Kendric's mortality by his graying hair, Javelle and Thane, with the magic cat Felabba, set out to retrieve their father's only hope, the seventh of the Six Swords of Rule. Carrying less of the heavy baggage of romantic melodrama than previous volumes, this is brisker and more readable, even if it still leans portentously toward shadows and dreams, spectres and dooms. (Feb.)