Fifth Quarter

Fifth Quarter has quite a few interesting characters involved in intricate relationships. There's excellent action, horror, romance, and a bit of humor mixed in throughout the story. This book explores taboos but doesn't step delicately; rather, it plainly thrusts the situation in your face. I enjoyed the emotional stress on all the different characters as their self-images changed. Tanya Huff does a lot of character development in her books.

This book brought back fond memories of The Firestone...my first encounter with Huff...managed to create a tapestry of words, revealing all the many things going on just beneath the surface. The simplistic yet complexity of each character reminds me of people in 'real life' The petty bickering of sibling rivalry mixed with very serious issues of FAMILY blend well with the other aspects bubbling away within the pages. Even though i felt more kinship with Vree (there is nothing i would not suffer for my brother) Bannon managed to find a special place in the circle of my thoughts...Despite his self-centered rediculous behavior...Shallow, vain, beautiful, mysterious but most of all silly. I read this in one day...now i'm just slightly vexed because that's it...the end! well of course there was the Quartered Sea... and to think...I kept frowning and leaving this book on the store shelf for so long!

This is a an amazing book! The characters are built, and I felt that I really understood what they were feeling. The action was fast-paced, but the plot was still built delicately. I really enjoyed the topic also, two assassins whose target turns their lives upside-down. I found the characters highly amusing with their witty remarks and sometimes stupidity. But, be warned, if you don't want love in your books, this might not be the book for you. I highly recommend it.

Very few second books in a fantasy series manage to live up to the promise of the first book. This one takes the already-interesting world of "Sing the Four Quarters" and vastly improves on it. It's not really a direct sequel in that the main focus of the book is not on the same characters, and even that in itself was a great choice. Huff has a talent for writing deeply flawed characters that are still very interesting and sympathetic, and this book is probably the best example of that. The characters are fascinating, the plot is suspenseful, and the mythology of the world (one of the most interesting aspects of the first book) is greatly expanded on. This book and the third installment, "No Quarter," are definitely two of the best and most original examples of the multi-volume fantasy genre.

Having found the first of this series and being totally hooked, I was certainly not disappointed. If you enjoy Anne McCaffrey or Mercedes Lackey, you will love this and indeed the whole series. Be careful...not a book easy to put down.