The Daughter of the Wildings series is possibly my favourite reading at the moment. This is book 3, and the author’s getting into her stride now. The characters are charming and heroic, the villains are exceedingly villainous (or just plain stupid), the setting is wonderfully detailed with a bit more revealed with every book, and the stories are just out and out good, rollicking fun.
The two main characters, Silas and Lainie, are (unusually for fantasy, but not for this author) a married couple. Theirs isn’t a straightforward relationship, which allows for a bit of angsting along the way, but they still get along fine. I’m usually critical of books where the characters fall headlong into stereotypical gender roles, but here it works really well. Silas has a gentlemanly desire to protect Lainie from… well, everything, basically. She still blushes at any mention of sex.
Yet they still have total respect for each other’s capabilities. So when they come to do business with a rich rancher, Lainie stands back and lets the more experienced Silas deal with it. And when they encounter the strange blue-skinned A’ayimat, he leaves it to Lainie, who has an affinity with their kind of magic. This kind of character detail is lovely.
The plot this time centres on the disappearance of the daughter of a the aforementioned rich rancher, kidnapped by the A’ayimat. Even though Silas and Lainie are manipulated into taking on the search, and even though they’re quite sure that the rancher isn’t telling them some important details, they need the money too much to refuse. And off we go into another fast-paced adventure, and it’s not much of a spoiler to say that the rancher was hiding a lot. But then, he’s not the only one. Knowing who to trust and who’s telling the truth is a big part of the plot.
I’ve been looking forward to meeting the A’ayimat up close, and here we get right into the midst of them and their magic, which isn’t quite like either Silas’s or Lainie’s. The subtle variation in magics is a big attraction for me in this world. Once again matters are resolved with both guns and magic, with heroism and luck, and a big dose of love to keep the evil at bay. And if perhaps our heroes manage to survive an improbable amount of beating up, gunshot wounds and arrows (sometimes all at once!), it would be churlish to complain (this is fantasy, after all).
Another charming and entertaining adventure in this series of good old-fashioned western fantasy tales. It’s so much fun I can’t give it less than five stars.
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