2007-12-05 Great follow up

This book is the follow up to the hugely enjoyable 'Resenting The Hero' by the same author and it very much helps to have read the first book before embarking on this one. With the same two central characters, Dunleavy Mallorough and Shintaro Karish, this time the Source and Shield find themselves in a rather different situation. Rather than having to face a great number of natural disasters to avert using their combined powers, when this story takes place the city of High Scape has settled down and they haven't had to do anything for ages. When the weather starts behaving rather oddly - something they can't change - the Source and Shield Pairs begin to find that their talents aren't appreciated by the local population.

Both Dunleavy's and Shintaro's mothers make an appearance in this book, both displaying how one's parents don't always get it right. In the case of Dunleavy's mother, her difficulties are very clear to the reader - Lee is a strange daughter, self-possessed and not needing anyone else's help, and living in a completely different world to that of the rest of her family; Shintaro's mother's behaviour is quite amazingly appalling and in this book we learn a great deal more about his past and why he's become such a charming and engaging chap.

At the end of the last book Taro had managed to abjure his title as Duke of Westsea but in this book he finds it coming back to trouble him. He not only has to head off his mother's demands for him to take the title, supported by the Prince, and the problems in the local population with the weather, as well as Lee's insistence that he carries out healings and tries to deflect the weather, but he also is at risk from a crazed killer who is targetting aristocrats, as well as the weird religion that tries to sacrifice the High Landed people to appease their god and prevent natural disasters.

There are many different aspects drawn together in this book and it was always really enjoyable. There didn't seem to be as much going on in this story as the previous one, part of the situation for the Pairs is that the natural disasters seem to have stopped and therefore they're not really doing anything, but in the lulls in action we learn more about Taro, and to some extent Lee, and it's very interesting. The potential romance doesn't move much further forward, although there are further hints that Taro's life isn't quite the carousing one that Lee believes, and Lee also finds a potential love interest (other than Taro) at the end, but it's a satisfying read with some great characters, particularly Taro and his mother, and an interesting world on which the story is based.