The Mirror of Worlds: The Second Volume of 'The Crown of the Isles' (Lord of the Isles)

If you like characters with integrity rather than loose assemblages of neuroses, "Mirror of Worlds", the second in the Crown of the Isles series, may be for you. I know people who like deeply dysfunctional characters because they justify those individuals own continuing decline. I've been adventurous places and done adventurous things. I can say with authority that when in a camp of armed revolutionary communists in Iraq, exploring my translator's suicidal tendencies never appealed to me as character development in real life. I suppose some folks disagree, but I suspect they've never done hard things in dangerous places. David Drake has done hard things in dangerous places and writes interesting characters who make good and bad choices in those situations. The results of those choices are not always predictable, because often bad things happen to good people, but Drake's logic is sound and his situations are quite compelling. A feature of many fantasy series is the tedious tendency to make the great destiny prophesied by the oracle of...who the hell cares...the driving force of document. Right now David Eddings could offer me $500 to read another of his novels and I'd tell him to pound sand. (For a grand, maybe...I'm not cheap, but I can be had. That still wouldn't get him a decent review if it was another "Tediousdestiniad".) David Drake writes character driven stories. The extraordinary events are terrain the characters make a path through, not rings in the noses of cattle being driven along a set path. Some people aren't comfortable with that kind of responsible behavior. Those people shouldn't stray far from home and rarely accomplish much of lasting value in changing times, because destiny fails to uphold their prejudices. David Drake's work is worth taking with you abroad and while in difficult situations. In "Mirror of Worlds" Drake throws his characters into a another set of astonishing hardships where they interact with another set of fascinating supporting characters. What is most amazing is that this is the eighth book in the series and the situations and characters are altogether different and still feel fresh. Kore the Ogre is entirely different than Beard the Axe from "Goddess of the Ice Realm"; although both have disquieting hungers and anti-social tendencies, they are quite different disquieting hungers and anti-social tendencies. "Lord of the Isles/Crown of the Isles" is the fifth major series of David Drake's that I've read in the last twenty years. His literary integrity and appreciation of integrity his characters show has been a comfort to me in hard times in every ocean on the globe. Other authors who cheated me I have put down their work and never read another new product of theirs (Paging Mr. Eddings, paging Mr. David Eddings...please pick up the "you'll never get another dime of mine, you hack" telephone...). David Drake continues to keep the faith and deliver stories and characters worth inve

Nobody's going to mistake this for Grand Literature To Last Through The Ages, but at least the author understands what brings readers to the fantasy genre. We want more than women folding their arms and pulling on their hair.