Enchanted Fire

This is a fantasy retelling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, and the third in Roberta Gellis' mythology series. In Gellis' ancient world the Gods of Olympus are powerful mages. There are also lesser magicians who have an innate psychic power. They are referred to as Gifted. These individuals are often either dedicated to the gods where they live protected in their temples, or they move freely among the populace often hiding their Gifts for fear of being accused of witchcraft and killed. Greece is a particularly bad place for the Gifted.Eurydice is a Thracian. In her case she had early been identified and taught in the temple, but she left a certain degree of wanderlust and left the temple to travel. When the story begins she had just escaped from servitude to a magician by draining his power from him. She is hiding on a nearly uninhabited spit of land when the boat, the Argo, beaches there.The Argo is manned by a group of heroes who have sworn to aid their captain, Jason, in reaching the land of Colchis and retreiving the fleece of a magical ram. Among these heroes is Orpheus, a Gifted musician whose enchants those who hear it. Orpheus sponsors Eurydice who convinces Jason to take her with them because she knows the location of someone who can tell Jason how to reach Colchis. Orpheus is both drawn to Eurydice, and repulsed by the fact that she has been raised in a society where women are given more freedom than in his village in Greece. While the adventures that they engage in are a lot of fun, especially for the reader who has some knowledge of the stories of Greek myths, there is a certain flatness to the story which is why it missed being 5 stars. I think it has to do with the fact that one of Gellis' strengths in her Medieval stories is that she has a such a definite idea about what the period was physically like. She knows about who would sit in a stool and who would sit in the probably one chair available and why. While she seems have done a lot of research about bronze age Greece, there is just less known about the social and domestic habits of the period so it feels less concrete.All in all though, still a better than average story with a strong romantic subplot.

Roberta Gellis is special. She writes good, exciting stories about intelligent, likeable characters and she is always original, you will never read a Gellis book and feel that it is run of the mill, everyday stuff. She stands out. She is one of my favorite authors. Also, her Greek mythology series is very good, her idea of magic power fits well with the mythology we were taught and still makes it all fresh and exciting.However, this is the weakest of the three she has written so far (Dazzling Splendour and Shimmering Brightness are the others). The central theme is the role of women and Orpheus just cannot accept that Euridyce is not a meek Greek female (you know,seen and not heard). After describing this conflict for a whole book, I find it a bit too easy to have Orpheus change his mind in just a few pages at the end. I would have needed some more explanation or some more time to see that his change of heart lasts. The ending left me feeling that she just had to wrap this up and finish. It is still a very good book, but the rushed ending leaves me with a slight disappointment.