Trio of Sorcery

December 13, 2010
Powerful women solve magical mysteries in this trio of short urban fantasy novels from the enormously prolific Lackey (The Phoenix Transformed). Fans of the Diana Tregarde series will welcome prequel story "Arcanum 101," in which Diana, a Harvard freshman in the early 1970s, must secretly work as a sorceress Guardian and investigate a psychic involved in a kidnapping case. "Drums" returns to the setting of 1994's "Sacred Ground," where Native American sleuth and medicine woman Jennie Talldeer must find a way to deter an angry Osage ghost determined to claim a living bride. In the standout "Ghost in the Machine," techno-shaman Ellen McBridge moves between the real world and that of an online role-playing game to debug a magical monster that's not behaving quite as programmed. This volume is a worthy addition to the urban fantasy bookshelf.

October 15, 2010

The first new Diana Tregarde story in almost 20 years and the first Jenny Talldeer tale in over 15 years set the stage for an introduction to a remarkable new urban fantasy heroine in this collection of three urban fantasy novels by the best-selling author of the Valdemar series. In Arcanum 101, which takes place in the 1970s, a young Diana Tregarde finds time between her studies at Harvard and her budding writing career to stop a supposed psychic from interfering in the police investigation of a kidnapping case. Drums, set in the 1990s, sends PI and Native American shaman Jennie Talldeer on a quest to prevent an angry Osage ghost from coming between Navajo Nathan Begay and his Chickasaw fiancee. In Ghost in the Machine, set in the high-tech world of modern times, computer programmer and techno-shaman Ellen McBridge investigates a series of mysterious deaths linked to a multiplayer online role-playing game. VERDICT Lackey's urban fantasies always reflect her keen sense of time and place, and her vivid characters and respect for other cultures make her a standout storyteller with a broad-based audience. Lackey's fans and urban fantasy readers will want this.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2010
Romance novelist and modern witch Diana Tregarde last appeared in a Lackey novel almost 20 years ago. She returns in a story introducing three novella-length urban fantasies, all featuring female sorceresses. Arcanum 101 eavesdrops on Tregardes neophyte days in the super-secret coven of Guardians. As a freshman studying at Harvard, Diana is solicited by an officer intervening for a distraught mother whose daughter has been kidnapped. In hiring a psychic to find her daughter, the mother certainly means well, but Dianas intuition quickly exposes the psychic as a witch with diabolical ends. In Drums, shaman and private investigator Jennifer Talldeer must thwart an angry Osage Indian spirit pestering a young couple. In Ghost in the Machine, Ellen McBridge is a computer programmer and techno-shaman who discovers that a wendigo is killing everyone in a popular computer game and arming itself to transcend computer code and enter the real world. Lackeys well-seasoned talents for good storytelling and character development are on full display here.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)