As many of you know, I am anti-Twilight.
Well, here is what should have been made into a movie instead of that drivel.
Mercedes Lackey, serving the fantasy community for longer than I've been alive, is a freaking AWESOME author. And the Serpent's Shadow is only ONE of her amazing works. I picked this one to review because it's the first in a series.
Anyway.
So this story takes place in the beginning of the twentieth century, in post-Victorian England. It follows the main protagonist of the story, Maya Witherspoon, as she attempts to assimilate into the White Man's culture. Yes, I said "White Man", because that brood of people is one of the biggest antagonists in the book. Maya is half-Indian and half-British (guess which half came from which parent, derp) and is also a female doctor. Plus, she's not a lapdog kind of woman. Triple threat, dude. So when her parents die mysteriously in India, she packs up, gathers a loyal family of servants, and flees India for the alien safety of England. She manages to survive there as a charity doctor and out of her own private practice, and also manages to use her own particular brand of awesome in the form of - wait for it - Elemental Magick.
Yeah, I know, it's ATLA all over again.
But yeah, in this book we are introduced to the Elemental Masters, a type of magician that can tap into the undiluted power of a traditional element and use it for all sorts of fun things, such as weaving protections, rendering bigots unconscious without touching said bigots, and astral projecting! Sounds cool, right?
Well, this may be a problem for Maya, whose evil aunt is also a magician... of the dark sort. Maya's evil aunt comes to England, too, in order to find and capture Maya and possibly kill her to gain Maya's powers. Luckily, Maya makes some friends that just may be able to help her out with that. Plus, she has seven quirky guardians in the form of "pets" to protect her.
...heyyy, what does this sound like??
Yes, that's right. The entire Elemental Masters series is based on a traditional fairy tale. For instance, this one is based off of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (thus the seven pets on the cover). The second book, the Gates of Sleep, is based off of - wait for it - Sleeping Beauty! The third book, Phoenix and Ashes, is based off of Cinderella. Book four, the Wizard of London, is based off of the Snow Queen. And finally, book five, Reserved for the Cat, is based off of Puss in Boots. All five of the books so far feature strong female protagonists who don't take shit from their male counterparts. All five of them take place before the 1920's (that's a yay in my book) and all five have craploads of awesome magick tossed in. Definitely worth checking out, and all of them were written within the last ten years. Go to your local library or bookstore and find 'em!
The thing I liked best about the books - besides the awesome fantasy part, the fact that all the female protagonists were kickass, and the time period - was the fact that they all managed to intertwine with each other. There's a definite continuity in this series, and the fact that they're all fairytale-based lends itself to the awesome. Everyone, even the lowliest, non-magician character, can be a hero. And everyone has some sort of strength that lends itself to good triumphing over evil.
Don't we need a little more of that nowadays?
