Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews.
Today we are reviewing To Light A Candle by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory, the second installment of The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy. In this second book, we are introduced to new characters, the magic system of the Obsidian Universe is developed even further and we are shown how inherently evil the Endarkened are, and the lengths they are willing to go to in order to kill anything that has been created by the Light. I’m going to start this review though by saying that I started reading this book a month or so after finishing The Outstretched Shadow, so it took me a little bit to get back into the book’s rhythm and slow pacing. I won’t deny it. I struggled with it, and it took me a couple of weeks to even get to page 50. This does not mean, however, that the book is bad. It isn’t. The problem is it starts out slow. And like in the first book, this slow pacing has a purpose, I know. But it was still hard to get back into it after a month-long break. This would have probably not been the case if I had picked this book up right after finishing the Outstretched Shadow since I didn’t experience any problems with slow pacing after picking up any of the other books later, but the holidays got in the way between Book 1 and Book 2… Anyways, on with the review.
This review has spoilers.
When we last saw our heroes,—Kellen, Idalia, Jermayan, and now Vestakia—they had just destroyed the spell that was causing the drought in the whole of the Elven Lands and returned to Sentarshadeen from Shadow Mountain. This is the book’s slowest episode. Unfortunately, it’s right at the beginning of the book, and some readers might have to push themselves to get past it (like me). But it also makes sense. And, like I said above and in my previous review, the slow pacing serves a purpose: It makes the events happening during the first 50 pages of the book or so believable. This includes Kellen’s training as a warrior and, eventually, as a Knight-Mage while at the same time allowing the authors to develop further not only their world but also their magic system. In this period of transition, the war between Good and Evil takes center stage, and we are introduced—re-introduced actually, since he was a secondary character in The Outstretched Shadow—to a new but eventually very important character, Cilarnen Volpiril, and the authors dedicate a fair number of chapters of this book to his story.
Cilarnen is one of the best things about To Light A Candle. His journey begins within the walls of Armethalieh, and we see him grow from a callow, naïve young man to a powerful, strong-willed, and shrewd High Mage. He is everything that Kellen is not, and his direct opposite in every way. But where these two are at first at odds with one another, with their respective fathers being actually sworn enemies in the Council of Mages, we see these two boys become friends and eventually brothers in magical arms throughout this book and the next. I really liked that in this book, and their relationship was one of the most memorable things about To Light A Candle when I read it the first time in the early 2000s and now.
Another character whose story arc is intrinsically linked to this world’s magic system is Jermayan. In To Light A Candle we move from the way of life and customs of humans living in Armethalieh in The Outstretched Shadow to the incredibly complex and frustrating—for some characters (and perhaps readers as well though not for me)—society of the elves. The authors dedicate a lot of pages to this. And I have seen a lot of readers frustrated and annoyed at how much time and pages the authors actually dedicate to how both Kellen and Cilarnen have to learn to behave within Elven society. But the way elves are portrayed in this trilogy is something that I have never seen in other fantasy novels where elves are featured. Their society is intricate and complex, and I found the way they behaved intriguing. But what was most interesting about these elves was their magic, particularly the magic concerning the Bond. In the Outstretched Shadow, we are introduced to High Magic, Wild Magic and Dark Magic. But in this book, we learn that there was once Elven Magic, which is now extinct, and this gives the entire Obsidian Universe’s magic system another layer that is just starting to get explored in this book when Jermayan becomes the first Elven-Mage in centuries by Bonding with Ancaladar, a black dragon that has been in hiding within the Elven Lands since the First War between the Elves and the Endarkened.
Shalkan cleared his throat. The unicorn was looking over Kellen’s shoulder with a very odd expression on his long equine face. Kellen whirled, dropping his tarnkappa to the snow, his hand going to his sword. And stared. He was face-to-face with a dragon. A very large, very black dragon.
In this world, Dragons are not evil. They are of the Light, and they are magic itself. However, that does not mean that there have not been any dragons fighting for the Dark in any of the previous wars between the Light and the Endarkened. There have, and these dragons fought for the Dark when their Bonded mages aligned themselves with the Endarkened and forced them to fight against their Enlightened counterparts or when an Endarkened forced the Bond between one of them and a dragon. And when we meet Ancaladar, the Queen of the Endarkened is looking for a dragon to bond with. Another peculiarity about dragons in this world is that they do not breathe fire or any other type of breath. Instead, they are an endless source of magic and one that does not require payment. But the Bond itself does have a cost: The bonded dragon loses its immortality and it will now die when his bonded Mage dies, or when both of them cast a Great Spell, a spell that uses all of the magic available to both parts of the Bond and kills them. So, technically, dragons are NOT an endless source of magic…but anyways. I thought this was an interesting twist nonetheless.
Vestakia also has a more prominent role in this book, when she discovers the Shadow Elves living inside the Elven Lands with her ability to sense whenever an Endarkened creature is nearby. As the long-lost daughter of the Prince of the Endarkened, her mother taught her how to survive and hide herself from her father by honing her ability to sense any creature of the Dark. This discovery sets the war between the Light and the Endarkened into motion, and we witness the first battles between both sides, with Kellen trying to earn the respect and ear of the commanders of the Elven army along the way.
To Light A Candle ends with Kindolhinadetil’s Mirror, the most powerful spell any of our heroes has ever cast, and the spell that let’s everyone know what the real purpose of the Endarkened is. Casting this spell is also our heroes’ first encounter with the Queen of the Endarkened and she will definitely not let an opportunity to deal Kellen and his friends a killing blow pass her by…
This a strong second installment for the Obsidian Mountain Trilogy and I do not think that it suffers from ‘second-book syndrome’ at all. I enjoyed it quite a lot. I only have two minor grievances against it: (1) There is no map, and I would have liked to have one since our heroes are actually traveling in this book, and (2) most of the Elven names, both of other characters and cities, are really hard to pronounce. However, like I said, this is relatively minor for the overall enjoyment of the book.
Rating: I Really Liked It
