Description
The seventh novel in Mercedes Lackey's magical Elemental Masters series reimagines the fairy tale East of the Sun, West of the Moon in a richly-detailed alternate Victorian England
For as long as she could remember, Mari Prothero had seen things—things that shouldn’t, that couldn’t be real: tiny manlike creatures that were mischievous and wore only seaweed, and beings that spoke to her kindly, but seemed to be made of water. Mari had grown up in tiny Welsh fishing village where she lived alone with her father, Daffyd, a master fisherman—her mother and brother having drowned when she was a child. Mari had long ago given up trying to talk to her father about the creatures she saw.
But on the morning of her eighteenth birthday, her father finally told her the great secret of the Prothero family. Her family had an ancient covenant with magical shape-shifters, the Selch, who were half-human, half-seal people. Her lost mother and brother were not truly dead, but neither were they human. Now Mari must abide by her family’s magical compact, or face dire consequences.
But Mari was not without protectors. The tiny creatures she had seen her whole life counseled her to bargain with the Selch. While in faraway London, Lord Alderscroft, head of the Elemental Masters, was aware that a powerful but untrained Water Master on the far coast of Wales was being threatened by some of the Elemental Elder Spirits, and he had dispatched some very unique champions to come to Mari’s aid....
About the Author
Mercedes entered this world on June 24, 1950, in Chicago, had a normal childhood and graduated from Purdue University in 1972. During the late 70's she worked as an artist's model and then went into the computer programming field, ending up with American Airlines in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In addition to her fantasy writing, she has written lyrics for and recorded nearly fifty songs for Firebird Arts & Music, a small recording company specializing in science fiction folk music."I'm a storyteller; that's what I see as 'my job'. My stories come out of my characters; how those characters would react to the given situation. Maybe that's why I get letters from readers as young as thirteen and as old as sixty-odd. One of the reasons I write song lyrics is because I see songs as a kind of 'story pill' -- they reduce a story to the barest essentials or encapsulate a particular crucial moment in time. I frequently will write a lyric when I am attempting to get to the heart of a crucial scene; I find that when I have done so, the scene has become absolutely clear in my mind, and I can write exactly what I wanted to say. Another reason is because of the kind of novels I am writing: that is, fantasy, set in an other-world semi-medieval atmosphere. Music is very important to medieval peoples; bards are the chief newsbringers. When I write the 'folk music' of these peoples, I am enriching my whole world, whether I actually use the song in the text or not."I began writing out of boredom; I continue out of addiction. I can't 'not' write, and as a result I have no social life! I began writing fantasy because I love it, but I try to construct my fantasy worlds with all the care of a 'high-tech' science fiction writer. I apply the principle of TANSTAAFL ['There ain't no such thing as free lunch', credited to Robert Heinlein) to magic, for instance; in my worlds, magic is paid for, and the cost to the magician is frequently a high one. I try to keep my world as solid and real as possible; people deal with stubborn pumps, bugs in the porridge, and love-lives that refuse to become untangled, right along with invading armies and evil magicians. And I try to make all of my characters, even the 'evil magicians,' something more than flat stereotypes. Even evil magicians get up in the night and look for cookies, sometimes."I suppose that in everything I write I try to expound the creed I gave my character Diana Tregarde inBurning Water:"There's no such thing as 'one, true way'; the only answers worth having are the ones you find for yourself; leave the world better than you found it. Love, freedom, and the chance to do some good -- they're the things worth living and dying for, and if you aren't willing to die for the things worth living for, you might as well turn in your membership in the human race."Also writes asMisty LackeyAuthor's website
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