I Need to Read the Books Now!

This is a wonderful collection of short stories in and around a couple of the author's fantasy series that definitely made me want to get into them, which is easy to do with this anthology and at least the first book of the series being in the Audible Included library.

Having only read The Murderbot Diaries before, it was really interesting delving into Wells' fantasy and seeing the difference in writing style, which actually reframed my perspective on the style for Murderbot. The quality and interest of the stories has some variance, as all anthologies do, but that is from pretty good to great in my opinion.

I always get excited to her Samuel Roukin's narration as he's always brilliant and has quickly become one of my favourite audiobook performers, after first coming across him in the brilliant Chasing Graves trilogy by Ben Galley.

Thoroughly recommend. ( )

I pretty much love everything Wells writes, and this short-story collection is no exception. I particularly liked the cycle of stories dealing with the young partnership of Ilias and Giliead from the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy; they strike a perfect balance between tragedy and elegy. ( )

1/6 of kickstarter. This was the one I already knew I'd enjoy, and I did. ( )

Between Worlds collects various stories set in Martha Wells’s worlds of Ile-Rien and Cineth. Ile-Rien was introduced in Martha Wells’s first published book, The Element of Fire (it’s also the setting of one of my favorite Wells’ novels, Death of the Necromancer). In the novel The Wizard Hunters, Martha Wells has characters from Ile-Rien encounter another world, Cineth. The stories in Between Worlds are all set before the events of The Wizard Hunters.

The very first story, “The Potter’s Daughter,” centers Kade, the heroine of The Element of Fire. It’s a prequel to her debut novel, where Kade (the illegitimate daughter of a human king by a fae queen) realizes that someone is trying to get her attention. Unfortunately, this involves murdering people under her protection. Kade goes undercover to get to the bottom of the killings. I enjoyed Kade in The Element of Fire, so it was nice to see more of her here.

The second Ile-Rien story stars Reynard Moran, a supporting character in Death of the Necromancer. Reynard’s backstory involves someone trying to blackmail his ex-boyfriend with their love letters (resulting in the ex killing himself). So when the family of a young girl who’s being blackmailed beg him to help her, he immediately agrees. And, of course, he’s aided in this venture by Nicholas Valiarde, a character I adore. “Night at the Opera” was written for this collection, although it’s now available as well on PodCastle. It’s the only story in this collection that I’d read before.

The majority of stories in Between Worlds are set in Cineth and follow Ilias and Giliead. “Holy Places” is about how Ilias and Giliead first met. Oh my heart! I remember from the trilogy that Ilias was abandoned as a child and adopted by Giliead’s family, but reading about the details of it was still affecting.

In “Rites of Passage,” Giliead longs to go to do Chosen Vessel stuff, but everyone’s saying he’s too young. Of course, their protests come to naught when a wizard’s curse starts to do it’s malicious work. In “House of the Dead,” Giliead and Ilias head off on their first official wizard hunt, responding to reports of something happening to a mountain trading city. They arrive to find the city entirely empty, without even bodies. This creepy story was one of my favorites in the collection. On the other hand, I wasn’t as fond of the very last story, “Reflections.” It’s okay, and it’s always nice to spend time with Ilias and Giliead. Still, it wasn’t anything special.

I’d only recommend Between Worlds for die hard Martha Wells fans. Luckily, I am a die hard Martha Wells fan, so everything worked out well. Oh, and if you’re not familiar with Martha Wells, you need to read something by her. Maybe start with All Systems Red?

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page. ( )

Between Worlds, which collects Martha Wells' stories of her Ile-Rien setting. Of these I've only read the first two, The Element of Fire and The Death of the Necromancer, leaving me unfamiliar with the characters in the last four stories, but each tale was self-contained enough that it didn't put me at a disadvantage.

The Potter's Daughter is a spooky fairytale from the time of The Element of Fire. Kade Carrion, the daughter of the king by way of a powerful fay, has disguised herself as a peasant in order to take revenge on the murderer of a local potter when she meets a travelling bard. With the charming young man following her round as she tries to apply her own brand of justice, it's painfully apparent from the outset that things aren't going to end well: not for Kade, not for Giles, and certainly not for the murderer of potter.

Night at the Opera follows Nicholas Valiarde and Reynard Morane as they try to extricate an aristocrat's daughter from a particularly nasty bit of blackmail. The daughter, Belina Shankir-Clare, is a breath of fresh air with a tendency to speak of things as she finds them. After a few tight moments during a performance of a particularly unlovely warhorse of an opera, the pair come through and save the day albeit with a certain amount of help from Belina, prompting Morane to suggest to Valiarde that they might benefit from having a woman on the team - which, in turn, presumably provides Nicholas with the incentive he needs to finally approach Madeline Denere, on whom he has clearly been crushing from afar.

The remaining four stories cover the friendship between Ilias and Giliead, who appear in The Fall of Ile-Rien series, set some years after the events of The Death of the Necromancer.

Holy Places has more than touch of Ancient Greece about it, with young Ilias taken out onto a hill by his step-father and left to die of exposure. Wandering back towards town, he gets lost and finds himself at the home of Karima and Ranior just as wizard is attempting to kill Giliead, who has since his birth been Chosen Vessel of the God of Cineth. Rites of Passage, set a decade later, follows Ilias and Giliead as they set out on their first unaccompanied wizard hunt using Giliead's ability to see the hexes and curses left behind by a rogue musician.

House of the Dead finds Ilias and Giliead, now experienced in the ways of the supernatural world, travelling out to a mining town high in the mountains. Attracted by the prospect of gold, the miners established their town beyond the protections of the gods, relying on the presence of towns lower down to deter wizards and curselings. Sadly this reasoning turns out to be horribly flawed, as the pair discover when they find Taerae completely denuded of its population.

In Reflections, Ilias and Giliead find themselves close on the heels of a fleeing wizard. After a long chase, they find themselves in a wood where some strange spirit of the place tries to tempt Giliead to stay forever and it falls to Ilias, despite his lack of divine gifts, to save the day.

Thanks to my lack of knowledge of The Fall of Ile-Rien books - they don't seem to be available in ebook editions in the UK - I came at the characters and their setting completely fresh and quick found myself enjoying them very much. The Classical structure of the world is very charming and strong contrast with the 19th century French atmosphere of Ile-Rien itself. The system of magic and curses is fascinating, as is the concept of a local god who protects a particular town through their Chosen Vessel, with communication between the two gradually becoming harder as the Vessel gets older - perhaps explaining why they tend not to live to a ripe old age. ( )